Are rebrands starting to look the same?

Graphic designer and writer Elizabeth Goodspeed looks at the current trends in designing for the commercial world, and the impact shortened turnarounds and economic tensions are having on originality.

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In today’s interconnected global culture, we seem to be experiencing an increase in creative group-think, where any designer’s attempt at a unique approach can inadvertently mimic another; each designer a single bird in a murmuration, looking only at their neighbours but still contributing to a scale outside their understanding. This tendency towards a herd mentality in design is so prevalent that Deanna German and Caroline Fox, creative directors at Koto LA, note that the creative and strategy teams across their five worldwide offices (New York, LA, Berlin, London and Sydney) meet regularly simply to ensure the positioning they’re building each brand from is different, and that there’s no substantial overlap between the work produced in each studio of the same company.

And while the marketplace of ideas champions originality, there's value in the familiar. Humans are wired to recognise and feel comfortable with patterns. Formal cues, when used at a large scale across time, begin to cohere around predictable messaging; kraft paper connotes the natural and organic, while metallic foil the futuristic and progressive. Those brushy illustrations mentioned earlier? Great for tech companies whose digital products can’t be photographed and who need a jolt of humanity to offset their image. By deploying certain visual tropes like these, brands can quickly cue consumers to their product’s function or ethos.