Poor Uno Kristiansson (and I guess poor Osten too, his brother). Little did they know, their entire aesthetic, brand identity, design DNA, etc., would one day be copped by Ikea. Actually, I don't know why I'm suggesting that they are to be pitied. For all I know, they invented Ikea, or designed for them. And maybe it’s not that their aesthetic and brand identity and design DNA got copped, it's just that design trends, even or especially within a specific country and era, tend to be similar to one another. I’m thinking of all that natural, unpainted wood. Those undulating-shaped bedposts on either side of a plain headboard. Those tear drop-shaped lamps. This is sometimes why I like design more than I like art (did I really just say that?), or at least like thinking about design more than I like thinking about art, because design strikes me as almost inherently promiscuous. It all looks similar and it all looks different. Maybe it partly has something to do with the fact that most designed objects (furniture, clothing, industrial design, etc.) are intended to be replicated, and not to exist as some kind of irreplicable, single original (photography exists at this junction too, but I don’t want to get too off topic). So anyway, poor Uno (whose very name ironically means “the one” or “the first”) because to my mind, it seems like Ikea totally ripped just about everything about his design studio—but also maybe that's not only untrue, but also just my faulty thinking about design. Design influences design, design copies design, design breathes design.
-Eugenie Dalland