You could have fooled us. Wait, actually, you did.
The best special effects are often the ones you never notice–which may make Ikea the most skillful special effects studio in the world. The Swedish furniture company has been aggressively ramping up its use of computer generated imagery in their catalogs. Ikea’s first CG photo was a Bertil pinewood chair in 2006. By 2012, the Wall Street Journal reported that 25% of their products were CG. Today, that figure has ballooned to 75%.
Yes, that means three out of four things you see in an Ikea catalog are fake. The fixtures. The furniture. The walls. The light. Why? It beats shipping endless pieces of prototype furniture halfway across the world for photo shoots.