I definitely think it's a mistake that IKEA stopped printing their catalogues last year. The offline experience is totally different from online. Online I tend to do direct searches for things I already decided I want, but the IKEA catalog is perfect for casual browsing and getting new ideas for stuff I would've never bought otherwise.
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.
Or they could improve the website to make it easier to get an overview of everything by category and scroll through listings with details with as little clunkiness and ephemeralness as possible
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.
>Production of catalogs like this squeezes our biome, and if we don't turn back, it will pop, and we'll be left with only enough resources for a small fraction of us to survive.
Not just IKEA. Argos and CPC both stopped catalogues, and my purchase with them declined. Argos especially had a USP over amazon being the “book of dreams”, something to leaf through in a Sunday morning and go “oooh”
"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."
Given IKEA essentially produce throwaway furniture by design, I don't think they've got much of a leg to stand on when it comes to environmental responsibility.
Just buying more stuff is literally how they have historically marketed themselves.
It used to be common in Sweden to see stickers by the mail slot that read "No advertisement, please! But gladly the IKEA catalogue." They stopped distributing the printed catalogue long before 2021, but I've kept the sticker.
Ha, does the postman/postwoman[0] respect the sign? I've got a "nevhazujte letáky" sticker on my mailbox ("no flyers/ads") that is completely ignored. As an immigrant this is particularly grating around election season when my mailbox is stuffed with material from a couple of anti-immigration candidates.
[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
I always think it is a nice fact that over 70% of all images (maybe even 90% today) in the latest catalogues are 3D renders.
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.
So many of the designs are timeless classics, but the older pictures make them look dated. It's the look-and-feel of the room, decor, colour balance, lightning, picture quality that make the pieces in the pictures look dated, as if they "belong in the past".
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.
The room ins the 80's looks like modern rooms. The decades before looks more alien/old, so it seems like furniture stopped changing much about 40 years ago.
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.
40 years ago was when teak went out of fashion (possibly out of concern for the rainforest?) and pine went in. But I think it has changed a lot still from that, 80s living rooms still look alien to me even though I'm old enough to remember them.
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.
I really can't see any notable difference between the 1983 catalogue and the 2013 one. Mostly that the more modern ones has messy rooms with people and stuff in them, but the furniture looks the same.
If you care a lot about furniture fashion maybe it is easier, but to me those are the same.
Usually with furniture there are forerunner designers / manufacturers that establish an innovation, then all mass manufacturers copy it a decade or two or five later.
IKEA catalogues, products and how they're rendered vary regionally, hard to capture it all with just English Catalogues. I have new IKEA products page from China/US/Germany bookmarked to see satisfy my Ikea enthusiasm. Interestly, hometurf Sweden doesn't get a lot of new products.
Readit News
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.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26163808
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBqhIVyfsRg
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.