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Home » Archives » Business

Studio encourages designers' daydreams

Brand gives creatives outlet from humdrum of annual reports

By Michael Heitmann
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
October 31st, 2007 issue

Jan Přerovský/THE PRAGUE POST
Aleš Najbrt, Zuzana Lednická, Petr Štěpán, Bohumil Vašák and Mikuláš Macháček of Design Studio Najbrt show off their Mojemoje brand of snowboards.
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Jan Přerovský/THE PRAGUE POST
The custom-designed boards, like Štěpán's, sell for 20,000 Kč.
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As the first Nordic winds have begun to sweep down over the country, skiing and snowboarding fans are beginning to stock up on beanie hats and baggy pants for their annual rite of winter. And this year, well-to-do boarders will be able to hit the slopes on a new collection of one-of-a-kind designer boards released by what may be the country’s premier graphic design studio, Najbrt.
The snowboards are part of the studio’s Mojemoje brand, which has expanded rapidly since its introduction last year. Given the creative nature of Najbrt’s employees — who spend most of their days creating logos for the city of Prague, for example — the studio began Mojemoje as a way of allowing its designers an outlet for their wildest visions.
“Of course, it means additional work for us, but it’s also fun,” said Zuzana Lednická, one of Najbrt’s designers. “It influences our daily work, because it gives us the space to be creative.”
Besides its flagship winter sports gear, the studio has had a whole assortment of diverse consumer products spring up, ranging from bags to coffee mugs.
At least so far, the project has not been about making money. The studio’s main business activities, which include creating advertisements, annual reports and book designs, keep it profitable enough.
Rather, the brand expresses the studio’s vision of artisan-style manufacturing that is uncompromised by mass production. That spirit extends to the project’s brand name, Mojemoje, which translates as “mine, mine.”
“[It’s about] something intimate, something you want to have,” Lednická said. “But at the same time it’s a comment on selfishness and ownership, and that’s what I like about it.”
Going with the brand’s high-end, hand-crafted focus are the companies Najbrt contracts to produce its customized consumer goods. The snowboards are manufactured by a company called LTB, based in Prague’s Chuchle district, while the brand’s shopping bags are handmade across the Vltava River in Žižkov.
“Every bag is an original,” Lednická said. “There are various messages to girls, for example, ‘Call your mother.’ ”
At times, Mojemoje’s small-scale production can consume the designer’s free time, like last year, when Lednická sifted through thrift shops in search of Prague’s best secondhand T-shirts. She then printed a Mojemoje logo on their front, claiming the mass-produced shirts as her own. To her surprise, the limited series of 40 shirts sold out quickly.
Board watch
While T-shirts and bags are Mojemoje’s sidelights, the brand is most well known for its custom snowboards, which are priced at 20,000 Kč ($1,058) and limited to production runs of 10 boards for each design. Last season, the studio sold about 30 boards.
The boards are notable for their visual flair: Lednická splashed the dissolved shapes of Mojemoje letters on her board; designer Mikuláš Macháček scribbled playful characters on his gold-, black- and white-colored “Bomb” series; and Petr Štěpán plastered his board with idiosyncratic pictograms, including on the board’s underside, which features a single first-aid symbol.
Snowboarding, with its streetwise style and culture of prolonged adolescence, may be particularly suited to the spirit of Mojemoje, but that doesn’t mean skiers are left in the cold: All of Najbrt’s designs are available in pairs of two as well. It’s a compromise solution in terms of artistic expression, as the designs are split between the skis and removed from their original composition on the snowboard’s broad canvas.
One of the studio’s owners, Aleš Najbrt, has joined his employees in working on Mojemoje, playing on the brand’s theme by making himself into a cuddly toy. Najbrt, who in his free time is half of the performing arts duo Thomas and Ruhller, fashioned his visage into what looks like a cross between a teddy bear and a pig. The toy, wrapped in Dutch-language packaging for reasons of “mystification,” is sold at the duo’s theater performances.
From bear-pig hybrids to snowboards, the studio’s small staff still process all of Mojemoje’s incoming orders themselves, and Najbrt has no plans to go mass-market anytime soon. Beyond one future project — customized bags for baby strollers — even the brand’s next products are uncharted, which is part of what makes it such an effective outlet.
“The Mojemoje product catalog is utterly heterogeneous and will continue to be so,” Lednicka said. “It comes into being naturally. It’s without borders, and that’s what we enjoy about it.”

Michael Heitmann can be reached at mheitmann@praguepost.com


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