IKEA Slowly Shedding Photography in Favor of Computer Renders
Of the two images above, one of them is a computer render and one of them is an actual photograph. Can you tell which is which? If you can’t, why should IKEA?
The Wall Street Journal reports that IKEA is slowly moving away from using photography in its catalogs in favor of CGI for its online and print publications.
12% of the company’s images this year were created by a graphic artist rather than a photographer, and next year that figure is expected to grow to 25%. No, it’s not that the company’s 208 million catalogs look better with computer fabrications — they’re simply cheaper and easier to produce.
Using CGI instead of photos offers some attractive benefits. Instead of creating and discarding entire living spaces for photo shoots, graphic designers can simply whip one together on a screen. Instead of replacing entire sets of furniture to change the color, they can use a few simple clicks and keystrokes.
It’s all part of the Swedish furniture giant’s overarching plan of cutting costs and increasing productivity.
The company first began experimenting with CGI back in 2005, after three computer graphic interns succeeded in recreating the image of an IKEA chair digitally (the image was later included in that year’s catalog to test its believability). Fast forward seven years, and the company is now retraining photographers in its massive 285-man, 94,000-sq-ft photo studio to work with computer rendering.
Check out the story over at the Wall Street Journal for an interesting quiz that tests whether you can recognize renders from photos. As for the two images at the top of this post, the top one is the render. Could you tell?
Ikea Uses Fake, Digitally Created Rooms Inside Its Catalog
When you're flipping through the IKEA catalog and wondering how they make all that easy-to-assemble furniture look so good inside that lovely apartment, know this: it's fake. As in, it doesn't exist. As in, it was made on a computer by a 3D graphic artist.
Redhead Girl - ball point pens
"Redhead Girl is an amazing portrait that was drawn, believe it or not, entirely with only 6 different colored ball point pens plus black. This artist has truly mastered the art of using ballpoint pens as shown in this piece and any other in their gallery." -^Astralseed
"Redhead Girl - Ballpoint Pen" by Samuel Silva
Art Of Mentoring In Minneapolis
Cross the Mississippi River on Saint Paul's Marshall Avenue and it morphs into Minneapolis' Lake Street — a colorful kaleidoscope of cultures.
Preparing a wall for a mural.
As Lake Street's collection of murals grows, so does its sense of safety, beauty and community — thanks to groups of artist-activists.
Chicano artist Jimmy Longoria and his organization, Mentoring Peace Through Art, is one such group. The team paints local businesses with murals, Jimmy says, "embracing huge spans of wall, every inch covered in a jungle of graffiti-deterring, ribbony paint."
MPTA's goal: to "foster youth leadership through art projects, forge strong communities and fulfill expectations that art works."
Allison Muotka is an intern at MPTA. She listens to The Current
REBIRTH of GAEA - Flowing Meditation
A layer-by-layer deconstruction of "Flowing Meditation," part of REBIRTH of GAEA, an epic visual tapestry delicately interweaving reflections on the environment and spirituality through the rich imagery of Greek Mythology.
My daughter Emma has had a deep connection to the environment for as long as I can remember. As she grew older and became enchanted with Greek Mythology, I decided to show my support for her interests by creating REBIRTH of GAEA, depicting her as the Goddess of Earth.
The song is "You're Too Late Satan" by Worm Is Green, an amazing Icelandic group mixing sparse electronic beats and glossy trip-hop threads.