Thank you for all your support, dear friends and backers, but we didn't make our fundraising goal!

Our plan is to try again in a few months. In the meantime we'd like to begin research, so perhaps there is a more definitive project for people to get behind...or maybe a different project will come along altogether. Any thoughts?

Thanks again for your support!

At the halfway point of our fundraising period, we’re gratified by the support shown at the outset. Seven backers have show support amounting to about 17% of our goal. Thank you!

We’ve gotten some questions, both in email correspondence and in the comments section of this page. I wanted to share some of them and our response as a way of clarifying or expounding on the project’s intent.

CL of New York, NY asks: “What the hell is this?”

Answer:

We’re seeking funding for a self-imitated project about the industrial manufacture of a ubiquitous IKEA object in an effort to produce an assembly manual, a document that is ubiquitous for IKEA consumers. The manual is absurd because it aims to document a complex, modern, and opaque process as a series of simple steps.

DL of Stockbridge, MA asks: “Why do you want to do this?”

Answer:

We own IKEA furniture. Say what you will about its quality/corporate ethics/sustainability/style, IKEA is a modern, corporate, complex, global force of logistics...but on its most basic interaction with its customers, it represents itself with a logical, simple, cause-and-effect assembly manual. This belies its true mass of complexity, and we want to tease it out to the surface. What does it really take to make a simple product?

We're not seeking to make political judgments. We're not trying to say IKEA is great because it can turn forests into cheap tables, or its horrible because it turns forests into cheap tables...but just that it does, and it is amazing and wild.We really like this project from Royal College of Art student Thomas Twaites.

Its very much in the same vein as our project. Twaites tries to build a ubiquitous, mass-produced toaster from scratch...he mines iron ore, attempts to process it into steel, forge it into a body, etc. It is a heroic, epic, and immensely stupid...but is none the less a very engaging way to tackle the issues of modern manufacturing.

JG suggests: “I'd love to have a 1-3 page executive summary available by phone app so I can shop w/ eco-intelligence... Ever thought about rolling this exhaustive project into that?”

Answer:

Summarizing the lifecycle of all IKEA products in a way that is easily accessible would certainly be an interesting and useful project. In a way, this project is far more archaic (and maybe some would say useless) in that it will use the medium of the IKEA instruction manual to convey the entire process of manufacture, not just the five or six steps take during home assembly.

It is not necessarily our goal to influence consumer behavior, document environmental impact, compare products, or gauge appropriateness. By producing a document that is well-researched, visually engaging, and clever, we hope to foment discussion about modern industry and western lifestyles.

That's it for questions and answers. If you have more, please feel free to comment on this post or in the general comments section. Email us if you want: excellence@deeluxdesign.com. Keep your eyes peeled for updates. We're working on the project website that will help us publicly collect and present research.

Again, thanks to our early supporters: Ulana and Danny, Jessica and Raphael, Amity, Elizabeth, Grandma Sue, Brian, and Beth. Tell you friends about our project so we can put your pledges to good use!