The IKEA Catalogue: From the “BookBook” to the Database
This IKEA advertisement describes their catalogue (a book) in the terms we would normally use to describe a new form of technology (namely computers) while mimicking the tone and aesthetic of Apple advertisements. Forbes recently published a post linking this Ikea advertisement with a Norwegian sketch called “Introducing the Book” that was posted before the iPad first came out (Forbes). What we don’t realize is that the books that we carry around in our bags and stack in our lockers were once a new technology as well. The comparison of these two videos points to this oversight. I became very anxious while reading through Lev Manovich’s article Database as Symbolic Form. It made me think: what isn’t a database? My IKEA Catalogue, for instance, is just a printed form of their website where I can type in “napkins” and have every different colour and pattern of napkin they carry pop up, each with its own Swedish name that I can’t properly pronounce. The website is a database that stores information that is readily available to their customers: what stock is currently available in their online store, how much it costs, whether or not it is on sale, how big it is, what colours it comes in, how many napkins come in a pack, and even allows their customers to see if the product is in stock at their local IKEA. IKEA, like many other businesses, uses databases not only to manage their inventory, but also to store information about their customers, mailing lists, catalogue subscriptions, Family Card membership information, images from their customers’ 3D kitchen designs, as well as information from every single kiosk their customers use at the self-checkout at the end of their visit at a store or online. In fact, the database was an integral part of their marketing scheme when IKEA decided to become not only a kitchen retailer, but a kitchen expert. An article on Figaro Digital explains the necessity of the database in IKEA’s plan:
Screenshot from <http://www.figarodigital.co.uk/case-study/ikea-the-kitchen.aspx>
In providing their customers with a virtual way to design their home, IKEA is using what Manovich calls the “paradigm”, or the imagined realm, to imagine the actual realm or what he calls “syntagm” (Manovich 14). However, this isn’t the only way the postmodern experience is at play in the way that Ikea presents itself to the public.
Let’s consider the IKEA store itself. Shopping at IKEA is a narrativized experience, one that is similar to attending a museum exhibition, going to an amusement park, or going to see a theatre production. “A museum becomes a database of images representing its holdings, which can be accessed in different ways,” writes Manovich, “chronologically, by country, or by artist” (3). This is similar to the ways in which one can experience the IKEA store, however, the predominant shopping experience is as follows: You walk into the store, grab a bright yellow shopping bag or shopping cart, grab a white gridded paper and a little Ikea pencil to write down the product names and where they’re located in the warehouse, maybe even grab a paper IKEA measuring tape, and then you begin to follow the little yellow footsteps that are glued to the white linoleum floor. Next, you are guided through the staged living rooms, brought next into the room full of every different couch Ikea is carrying at the time, next to (I can’t remember exactly) the staged kitchens, next past the kiosks with computers and experts (Ikea employees) where you can design your own dream kitchen, next to the room with all of Ikea’s dishware and napkins, next to the staged bedrooms, next to the room with all of the beds and bed frames and bed sheets IKEA carries, and so on, until you reach the scented candle and picture frames room where you feel sad because your narrativized, guided Ikea experience is almost over, and soon after you reach the warehouse, where, in a very post-modern way, you must find whatever furniture you are going to buy all on your own, using the notes you made yourself on that little white piece of gridded paper with that tiny Ikea pencil they provided you with when you entered the store and began your prescribed route through their showroom. The warehouse, in having the customer find the various pieces of the furniture they are choosing to purchase themselves, is a very database-like experience. In the warehouse, the customer must construct the narrative of their experience for themselves, completely unlike the rest of the IKEA experience where the narrative is guided and planned for the customer. Unlike a regular department store or a museum as described by Manovich, it is very difficult to just go to IKEA to buy bed sheets because it is very difficult to get directly to the bedroom section without first going through the living room section and, let’s be honest, it is very difficult to avoid the colourful children’s section, as the little alleyways that let you skip ahead in your IKEA experience aren’t as well marked as the little footprints on the linoleum floor. The way that the showroom is designed makes flowing from one section to the next the easiest way to experience IKEA, and it is part of what makes shopping at Ikea so much fun.
The IKEA shopping experience mirrors what Manovich describes to be new media’s relationship with the terms paradigm and syntagm: it reverses it. “Database (the paradigm) is given material existence, while narrative (the syntagm) is de-materialized. Paradigm is privileged; syntagm is downplayed. Paradigm is real” (15), as you’re actually picking up the objects you’ll be bringing home with you in the warehouse, “syntagm is virtual” (15), the objects in the showroom remain on display even after you purchase their components that you picked up in the warehouse. The database is not only used by Ikea in a literal way when you subscribe to their catalogue or their Family Card, it is also used as a cultural form when you consider that from the moment you walk in, you are marking off the items that interest you in the store (just as you would click on them online and add them to your shopping cart), you are collecting the pieces to put together the furniture in the warehouse (the deconstructed furniture itself is an example of the postmodern industrial structure of IKEA), and when you go to pay for the furniture, you are now scanning each item yourself and loading it back into the cart or into the big blue IKEA bag you’ve purchased (just as you would type in your address and credit card information online). At IKEA, “the narrative is constructed by linking elements of this database [of IKEA’s inventory] in a particular order—designing a trajectory leading from one element to another” (Manovich 15).
The IKEA Catalogue, a printed book that seems to preserve traditional material culture, is in fact a cultural form constructed from a database of computer graphics (CGs). In fact, “60-75% of all of IKEA’s product images (images showing only a single product) are CG” (Parkin). Since 2010 IKEA has also been creating entire room images in CG because of how easy it is to substitute certain elements such as fridges, faucets, and cabinet hardware without having to reshoot the entire frame. CGs help IKEA save time, costs, and environmental pollution associated with shipping (Parkin). The fact that IKEA Catalogues themselves no longer exist without the help of a digitized system to design the format and to create the images inside of it, make the “bookbook” advertisement intensely ironic. In fact, if you flip your IKEA Catalogue over to the back cover, you’ll notice a margin that reads, “SCAN THIS PAGE REGULARLY TO GET MORE OFFERS FROM IKEA” (IKEA Catalogue). Now when you go through the IKEA Catalogue, you’ll notice white plus signs in orange circles at the top right hand corner of certain pages and a caption that reads, “Scan this page” (IKEA Catalogue). The IKEA Catalogue is now reliant on the technology of your tablet or smartphone—you must download the Ikea Catalogue application in order to fully appreciate your “bookbook”. Without the application, what you see is what you get. However, with the IKEA Catalogue app, you have access to special offers when you scan the back page and “extra content” (Ikea Catalogue 5) when you scan each marked page, including 360 degree views of the rooms featured in the catalogue and tips for styling a room with IKEA’s products. Their website advertises that the application is going to be able to do even more in the near future, including background stories about the products and the designers, “inspirational how-to films”, and “augmented reality, place furniture in your room” (IKEA website).
Screenshot from <http://www.ikea.com/ms/en_CA/catalogue-2015/index.html>
The IKEA Catalogue application makes your browsing experience almost completely virtual: you no longer have to imagine what the furniture in the catalogue would look like in your home, you can now hold up your iPhone as a lens and pretend that you have a new IKEA couch in your living room. The “bookbook” is no longer the cultural object, it is merely the façade of a cultural object that is a large database of videos, stories, 3D applications, digital images, and other materials that are inaccessible without technology. The irony of the bookbook commercial is almost heartbreaking once one considers the IKEA Catalogue application and now the commercial must be read as a piece of cultural criticism. A cultural form that is traditionally read as a chronological narrative (the book), or what Manovich calls a “hyper-narrative” (Manovich 10), now has a less overtly linear structure where one can choose to veer off and explore different aspects of what is printed on the page, in this sense, IKEA has found a way to “merge database and narrative into a new form” (27).
How has the database as a cultural form changed the way that we interact with old technology that is not digital itself? In particular, what has the database as cultural form done to traditional book culture? How has this cultural form changed the ways in which we interact with the real world? Is it possible to enjoy the IKEA Catalogue at all without experiencing the overwhelming feeling of FOMO (fear of missing out) if one doesn’t download the app? What contemporary cultural objects are not influenced by the database as a cultural form?
Works Cited:
“Case Study: IKEA: the Kitchen.” Figaro Digital. Web. September 29th, 2014.
IKEA Catalogue. USA, Inter IKEA Systems B.V., 2014. Print.
Manovich, Lev. “Database As Symbolic Form.” Database Aesthetics: Art in the Age of Information Overflow. Ed. Victoria Vesna. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007. 39-60.
“The IKEA Catalogue 2015.” Ikea.ca. Web. October 5th, 2014.
