The new iPhone will be announced next Tuesday with much fanfare and excitement. But that will pale in comparison to the amazement IKEA launched this week.
In an hilariously tongue-in-cheek video, IKEA has dramatically re-introduced to a deeply digitally entrenched world something that “changes the way we live, a device so simple and intuitive using it feels almost familiar.” What is this awesomeness? The 2015 IKEA catalog or, if you will, a “bookbook.” Yes, that’s right. A physical catalog.
The video, which has accumulated over 3 million views since Wednesday, goes on in a very Apple-esque manner regaling us with the magazine’s incredible features like the ability to easily browse forward and backward with your finger or the fact there’s no lag between page loads or how to bookmark your favorite items by — wait for it — folding down the edge of a page or how multiple users can browse the same catalog with a “simple, color-coded system.” Or, best of all, how to share the catalog by, well, literally sharing it.
How does one acquire this amazing new catalog? Very easily. You simply download it from your mailbox, the one you open with a key. And if it’s not there, try “refreshing” the next day.
Of course, the promotion and buzz around this new “device” is distinctly digital.
Additionally, Australian graphic design group CGSociety recently published a piece quoting Martin Enthed, the IT Manager for the in-house communication agency of IKEA, which revealed that up to 75 percent of the products in the IKEA’s online catalog aren’t even products at all. They’re computer-generated images of products created to make product display more flexible and less expensive by obviating the need for physical photography. Which, of course, makes one wonder just how “real” this physical IKEA catalog actually is.
Either way, it’s the best product catalog announcement we have ever seen.
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