retail therapy

Though I’ve always had an appreciation for the story behind the naming convention of IKEA furnishings—giving sobriquets rather than model numbers because that’s how the founder’s brain associated things, I am finding this new advertising campaign to be pretty funny and a nice complimentary look at the struggles we have sometimes with the accessories that we feel obligated to buy and assemble—despite the fact that we’re in sort of an admitted post-consumer, peak-curtains state. In addition to the cabinet or couch’s proper name, each item in their special-edition catalogue is given a description gleaned from the most common familial or relationship advice sought in Sweden. This tongue and cheek treatment comes to us via Bored Panda, which features some of the furniture giant’s other recent creative projects, including instruction manuals that turn the potentially frustrating and argument-inducing experience of putting together a HEMNES daybed into an act of foreplay.