Whilst perusing the affordable Scandinavian wares of Ikea, I happened upon a particular sequence of wall graphics that told the story of how Ikea’s savings are passed on to the customer. Strangely, only five of the seven ‘Ikea concept’ panels used correct spelling with the remaining ones neglecting to use apostrophes (the above example also has a rogue space before the question mark). I’m now well versed in Ikea’s efficient production and distribution methods but surely they could have spent a few extra euros on spell checking. We’ve all made mistakes, but three in twenty nine words at 124pt nationwide is quite special. At first I thought ‘trust me to notice that’, so my biggest smile came from the huge ‘Thats why!’ that came after the equals sign, where a staff member had pasted a cut-out apostrophe on the wall!

This is the Ikea concept as it should have looked!

(Opinion: Jon Price – Designer)