Why Does Everything Look The Same?

The last edition of The New Luxurian lamented over the world’s irrational obsession with continual newness – this edition is more of the same: a look at our (perhaps unconscious) tendencies towards homogeny. Particularly in brand.?

Everyone from Saint Laurent to Berluti, Balenciaga to Balmain (and Burberry for a time) fell victim to the ‘blanding’ phenomenon that hit luxury like a tidal wave a couple of years ago. That is, the stripping away of any distinctive element in logos, manifesting as a mass switch to the sans-serif camp.?

Novelty is dying. Though the creative industries (for the most part) seem to be genuinely striving for originality, it’s a case of riff-on or rip-off at this point. We’re designing in an industry-wide echo chamber.?

It’s not that these aesthetics are poorly executed, it’s that they’re not anywhere close to distinctive.?

I’m no designer, but I’m confident a design can’t be eye-catching if my eyes can’t escape the hoards of similar designs it sits amongst. Designers of any ilk – my colleagues included – will likely be exasperated by my somewhat sweeping generalisations over the ‘bland’ and indistinct logos saturating luxury sectors (”Em, the kerning is vastly different, see?”). I can see, but the minutiae is exactly that. More than is rational I can delight in the tiniest of details (a pedant through and through), yet I find little to delight in among a sea of the same thing.

Is the shift ironically to do with diversification? The most guilty in this case tend to be fashion houses, who are understandably moving towards being lifestyle brands. But in doing so, they’re becoming broad and bland. Balenciaga’s monogram once had stitching symbols linking its Bs, a subtle cue that this was a brand of craft. Now, you wouldn’t know Balenciaga from Adam visually. Without their established reputation (a marred one at that) and guerrilla marketing tactics, a bystander would have no idea what they offer. The only clue is, hilariously, that basic logos are now the calling card of luxury fashion.?

This majority’s shift to minimalistic, ‘quiet’ aesthetics – not just the loss of elaborate lettering – is likely symptomatic of “design of the inside” becoming more of a focus for C-suites than outward visual perception. What has been lost in decorative strokes has (hopefully) been made up for in genuine, value-driven decision-making. Beautifully crafted, durable, detail-centric products and experiences are far more likely to win hearts and loyalty than overt labels, a shift that has led to interchangeable design codes.?

While I’m a believer in substance over style, the two are not mutually exclusive. Why can’t brands do both? Especially those who claim to be forward-thinking.?

In his book Filterworld, author Kyle Chakra (rightly) laments how algorithms have flattened culture. He begins with the ubiquity of exposed brick and neon signs in inner city cafés before tracing the reaches of machine-made ‘curation’, proving how algorithmic recommendations dictate our choices and experiences. In turn, taste has been flattened too.

Taste is one of those abstract nouns that is often exclusively described in hand gestures, hands wrapping themselves around air in vague motions. Historically one could rarely have good taste outside of art. Art then proliferated into fashion and then interiors. Today, taste can apply to everything from the technology we spend money on to the feeds we scroll. Arguably there are degrees of it, but we tend to have taste or lack it. Rather than intrinsic, it’s more demonstrative.?

Or it was. It’s tough for taste to exist in the noise of homogeneity.?

This is a call for brands to return to their place as tastemakers, a place of distinction and distinctiveness. It’s a place that must be earned. And brands will only be deemed worthy of it if they decide to be something to someone, rather than everything to everyone. Fight against the algorithm-dictated aesthetics because a more varied landscape is a richer one.?

In our risk-averse times, take the risk. Fortune favours the bold.