I no longer shop at the Urban Outfitters / Anthropologie duo of companies because I am uncomfortable with their corporate practices, but I do visit their sites for decor ideas. I was excited to see that UO was featuring removable wallpapers that are, they say, “easy to apply and remove.” Unfortunately for the Urban Outfitters photog director, though, the close-up shots are comically bad. Enjoy!
First impression is nice, right?
Wait…Are those bubbles?
More bubbles than a bubble bath!
And gaps between the seams.
Easy to apply, indeed. Just not easy to apply correctly.
Lessons learned:
Always prepare your surfaces: Rough walls = rough wallpaper.
Since your wallpaper is removable and repositionable, you should probably try to reposition it rather than trying to hide your missed marks with a piece of furniture inadequate to the job.
If you are still interested in this product and don’t want to buy through Urban, check out Tempaper directly.
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Hilarious.
Bubblier than a bubble bath. All that is missing are the rubber duckies!
Oh, my goodness. I didn’t believe that these photos are official UO product shots, so I had to check for myself. Yup, they’re right on the web site, making this product look bad [or at least tricky to apply correctly], and they’re also completely unstyled. Wow, I’m so surprised!
These photos are so official, it’s not funny. And just because I know that someone will inevitably send me a nasty note saying that I am picking on UO; I’ve really just had restraint in the past. To wit, when they were carrying +oo, a special ‘collaboration’ with the Blu Dot label, there was an enchanting lacquered yellow end table that I would have bought had the product close-up not shown about 1000 chips, dings and scratches. Obviously, if the surface can’t handle the flash of a camera bulb…..
The one thing I had noticed about UO’s furniture photography in the past is that, if a detail or a side wasn’t shown, that was a red flag that it wasn’t nice. I had checked out some furniture in person that had unfinished-looking or kind of crappy elements, so i could see that the photography was pretty strategic.
These photos just look so sloppy and amateurish. I’m really just shaking my head. I’ve art directed photo shoots in the past, where I’ve dealt with some challenging, poorly crafted objects. Polishing a turd comes with the territory, and I guess I’m shocked that this particular turd didn’t get polished.
I guess I hold UO to Anthro’s standard, which is probably unfair. Anthro can make a mumu look sexy, or a silly tchotchke really desirable and special.
I made the same comparison to Anthro and I’ve often been sorely disappointed when going to the Anthropologie store and finding that the romantic drapes or the perfect drawer pull was actually nothing like the photograph. And I guess the question comes to me; which approach is really fairer to the consumer? Are we wrong in wanting what amounts to product porn? In truth, a lot of people who buy this ‘easy-peasey’ wallpaper are going to end up with a result that is exactly like what the screenshot shows. So maybe this is better than the Anthro alternative.
You have a point, but the job of the photography is to both inform and seduce. If the photo doesn’t make an object desirable, what’s the point of trying to sell the thing? In this case, maybe the product is just weak.
I actually work as a retoucher in the (extremely small) photo studio where all of these photos are taken. These pictures get handled very quickly in production by a very small number of people, so it doesn’t shock me that one of the five patterns of wallpaper (especially one of the darker ones) went up with visible bubbles.
This stuff is usually installed, photographed and removed in about ten minutes so that the next item can be put up in its place.
If I had processed that image myself, I probably would have taken an extra ten minutes in post and smoothed out the wrinkles, but sometimes it’s hard to gauge how something is going to read once the content management software has resized and sharpened the image for the site.
Check out the 250-odd new models, flats, furniture, accessory, decor and book photos that hit the UO site every single day and tell me how many others are totally unacceptable for use. Then maybe go easy on us, eh?
G,
Thanks for chiming in.
Don’t get me wrong–no small animals or children were harmed, so I don’t really mind and I am not going ‘hard’ on anyone. But you must admit that the work product is truly substandard and it uniquely undercuts the positioning of the product: easy to use! repositionable! I know these shoots happen quickly but the viewer is inevitably left with the question: is Tempaper a product that cannot be correctly applied in a reasonably expedient manner or is this just a bad photo? I’ve taken a look at some of the other products and unless sagging wall hangings and dirty floors are a part of UO’s dilapidation chic (and maybe they are), I think there are a few more misses in these recent photos. Just my opinion.
It just sort of contributes to my overall feeling about UO: really uneven quality –like the jewelry stand I once recommended but is too flimsy actually hold jewelry– by a company that pumps out cheap, sometimes crude goods to youngish consumers with little attention to detail.
Just wondering what corporate practices you don’t like at Urban Outfitters / Anthropologie?
That’s a question I’ve been getting a lot lately (with incidendiary results no less) so I’m going to write a post soon. Hopefully live on Monday or Tuesday. The short answer is that I am bothered by the professed politics of some UO corporate execs and that, further, I think that their corporate branding represents two sides of a regressive cultural / racial narrative: hipster racism at UO and neocolonial romanticism at Anthropology.
Do you even think about how writing stuff like this affects real people? The people who did this work could lose their jobs!