The IKEA catalogue through the ages(ikeamuseum.com) |
The IKEA catalogue through the ages(ikeamuseum.com) |
It might come off as a cost saving short term, but I doubt in the end the catalogues did not bring in enough money anymore.
Understand the advantage of serendipity by flipping through pages instead of entering product search queries.
Fyi, the latest 2022 catalogs are available online with the typical "print book" layout and also downloadable as pdf:
https://www.ikea.com/us/en/customer-service/catalogues/
With pdf catalogs, you get the undirected window shopping without killing trees and adding to landfills.
EDIT reply to: >Those PDFs really don't work well on mobile devices.
Sorry for not being clear. The initial UI is not a pdf. They are web browser "digital catalogs" with page layouts similar to a printed book. There's also an option to download to pdf file.
I just tried it on my smartphone and the pages look fine. No pdf download necessary.
I wonder what leads to worse pollution. A world where all information is printed and there are are no computers, or a world where no one uses paper and computers, cell phones, Kindles, etc proliferate.
Now I simply buy stuff on Amazon.
"Ikea has for years sold children’s furniture made from wood linked to vast illegal logging in protected Russian forests, an Earthsight investigation has found."
https://www.earthsight.org.uk/news/press-release-illegal-rus...
Just buying more stuff is literally how they have historically marketed themselves.
I almost miss the paper adds. Somehow they were wildly more relevant ...
[0] - I just realised that I only use the Scottish gender-neutral slang "postie" and don't know the correct one in standard English :D
This gives IKEA the ability to change things (plants, wallpapers, and so on) depending on different cultures without having to completely change a studio.
Edit: a YT video from 3 years ago about the workflow: https://youtu.be/bJFlslL1wFI Textures are prepared in Photoshop, models made and textured in 3DsMax, rendered with V-Ray.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2012/10/02/162139455...
(note: my employer is a part of the IKEA group)
If you place these exact pieces in an otherwise modernly decorated room (colour balance of walls/ceilings/lightning), and photograph with modern style - they instead look classy and timeless.
It's rare that people can isolate which sensory impressions make them react in a certain way emotionally. Here it's clearly not the designs, but the styling/lightning/photos.
To me it is interesting seeing how progress was fast and then slowed down at different points in different fields. Like, how far back do you have to go before you start noticing that these things aren't new? For webpage design you see how it was really different 20 years ago, but not that different 10 years ago, game graphics mostly peaked 5-10 years ago depending on genre (people still happily buy and play gta5 that is 8 years old without cringing at its graphics) etc.
The IKEA 80s living rooms have some things in common with those I've seen in old films and sitcoms (e.g. Back to the Future), but it's still not quite the same. IKEA 80s catalog images are as it was in Norway though, totally.
If you care a lot about furniture fashion maybe it is easier, but to me those are the same.
Edit: maybe not, just had a look at their 1981 catalogue...
The part for sitting seems to have been made out of metal back then, in my version, it is the same plywood material as the frame.
For example the cantilever laminated wood frame chair made an appearance already in the 1930s. https://www.artek.fi/en/products/armchair-401
Cantilever steel tube + cane chair Cesca from 1928. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cesca_Chair
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=Armchair+406+aalto&iax=imag...
https://fivethirtyeight.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/roede...
from:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-weird-economics-of-...
I know people here like to criticise Ikea but they are remarkably good at squeezing cost out of their business.
Sure, in much the same way a £10 tshirt from Uniqlo matches a £90 tshirt from Sunspel. They're not really the same thing.
The more paper we use, the more trees we plant.
The “IKEA is crap” thing seems to be an American trope.
If I wanted to give that 1986 couch to a charity shop, they would probably refuse and say they could never sell it.
Of course there are some more neutral, "timeless" things too. The 1983 cover couch would not stand out at all today, and I believe the little tables are still for sale at IKEA (I have one, though it's in the laundry room)
That carpet is literally in the first room of the 2013 catalogue. Or maybe it is a different carpet, but I can't tell the difference.
https://www.businessinsider.com/ikea-2021-catalog-delayed-im... https://au.lifestyle.yahoo.com/ikea-offensive-racial-image-b...
and the "can't be black for the greek market" from 2018?
https://www.thelocal.se/20180206/ikea-agent-tells-actor-he-c...
Point I am trying to make is that IKEA is a slick global company that is not "good" in a moral sense but rather doing what makes them the most money.
For the other example it's the same. I'm from the Netherlands so an IKEA ad with a black man would not surprise me, but for example an Arab man with a turban would. In the advertising world you want to connect with your target audience. I have a hard time believing this has anything to do with racism because their catalogues are full of people from all over the planet.
Anyway, I don't like IKEA products, I think they are rubbish. But I like the fact they use a lot of 3D renders.
This might be a scandal with FSC, but hardly with IKEA. I don't expect every company to themselves track every piece of raw material back to the sources. They must be allowed to outsource some of that.
They really tried to make it look like it was about IKEA children's furniture!, but if you actual read the article you linked it has actually very little to do with IKEA and there's nothing there that says IKEA did anything reprehensible or even anything that is hard to defend.
The mailman proper, if I can call them that, did however deliver all stamped mail no matter what. The "no adds"-sign does not work for stamped adds, or like flyers put into the newspaper, etc.
I linked that article, because I recall it in the news, and it got fairly widely covered at the time with the blame firmly placed at IKEAs feet - "They should have known" apparently.
People believe what they are told these days, without any desire to fact-check or cross-reference. I think this was my point.
