IKEA bomb shelter furnishings catalog by Midjourney
core77.com
core77.com
The prompt may not be explicit enough about it looking like IKEA.
This looks like something from the 70s. Which makes sense, since Midjourney likely assumes a connection between bomb/fallout shelters and the Cold War.
So far, the public ones are often like a first-year student's impression of X -- it nails some aspects (symmetry, color palette, or framing), but others completely elude it (object-object relativity like "zippers go on clothes, not skin" or intentionality behind object choice).
What's fascinating now is which things are picked up on (e.g. 70s) and which are ignored (e.g. specific IKEA furniture design style).
And then how that's reinterpreted by viewers -- "Looks great!" vs "Misses A & B!"
Which to me makes the whole system an autoecoder for ignorant people (in the not-knowing, not pejorative sense).
If Midjourney can create an image that will be attractive to people who don't know furniture design, and 90% of people don't know furniture design, it works for meme purposes.
However, this is so especially true that I can see the situation inverting itself such that a new, higher bar is set for concept work.
Like, OK, interesting examples of a lifestyle take on a traditionally bleak structure. But also, what's really unique from an industrial design POV? Are there functional details that hint at a new experience aside from visual aspects? Or, what are some additional takes that move the discussion out of the more common form vs. function dichotomy?
(And as the comment on the post ever so gently hints, I think there's still going to be some tension around the introduction of this new tooling... especially if it is effectively adding noise to the space in the form of new visuals without as much consideration. How much of this is now an editorial problem vs. a problem for the industry?)
Not my focus, but would love to read through something that connects "This is how it breaks down input/example images, identifies relevant high-level themes and characteristics, then rebuilds those into novel output images."
Specifically around image generation, although I assume there's some text metadata in the background.
F.ex. "What makes bomb shelter images look like bomb shelters?" is a question I could answer, but apparently one Midjourney et al. can do a pretty good job answering too.
— Philip K. Dick, describing the inspiration for his 1955 short story Foster, You're Dead!¹
1. <https://web.archive.org/web/20150419181303/http://american-b...>