The beauty I would say with democratic design is,
almost anybody could do a beautiful product
if it could be at any cost at all.
I think the beauty is that we could make great design
accessible to the many people.
Democratic design is our take on how to fulfil our vision.
It contains five different elements.
It has great shape to it or form if you like.
It’s about function. It’s about quality.
It’s about sustainability.
And last but not least, it’s making it accessible for everybody,
so it has to be at a low price.
That’s democratic design.
We have a very clear standpoint in how we’d like to express
and help people to solve their needs at home.
It’s not only about the functionality as such.
It is the added value,
like for instance you get light in the closet.
To have a little simple light that gives fantastic functionality
but doesn’t disturb your partner. It’s easy and accessible.
We just don’t only add functionality. Life becomes easier.
That’s the essence of the point of view
and the home we want to be known for.
Design in general is about teamwork
and from the start; it’s setting up the right kind of team.
We had an idea that we wanted to do tools for kids.
We went down to Italy and we visited some schools.
We saw that kids could be really creative on their own
if they just had the right tools.
Then we started to do sketches.
When we have all these millions of sketches,
we meet up with the team and we present this for them.
And they give their input.
We have this relationship with both our co-workers
and with our customers and suppliers.
They have the knowledge about what they are best suited to produce.
Then we adopt the design
to the possibilities within that very factory and production line.
And that’s one of the main hurdles when you want to do low-cost items.
So this pen for example, we had discussions about
having two tips, one small and one big.
We decided to take one tip off because we figured
we could reach a better price if we only had one tip
With a good price we can reach out to the many people.
We wanted this whole range to be of a really good quality.
We wanted the colours to be just fantastic.
And we wanted them to be fun to use, easy to use,
and also long-lasting.
And do you know what the best thing is?
They are washable.
This is a new product. It’s the [Sellia] bedside table.
And as you can see it has a lovely IKEA design to it.
Colourful.
By using a material not commonly used in bedside tables, sheet metal,
we can achieve a completely different price level.
Most people have a tendency to have their mobile phone by their bed
and they want to charge it at night.
They use that as an alarm clock in the morning.
And instead of charging it on top of the bedside table,
we thought it might be a good idea
to be able to charge it inside the bedside table.
Then we have this drawer and just flipping to the bottom,
you can see that the drawer does not go all the way down.
There’s a gap here and that’s for the cable management.
A really simple, straight-forward way of doing cable management.
All at the price level of 20 Euros.
If you look at design in general, it’s quite elitist.
And our work within IKEA is to actually make
all of those desirable things, the really good stuff,
the really good solutions accessible for more people.
That’s our every day work.