Are rebrands starting to look the same? The challenges defining commercial design

Other constraints still compound the difficulty of achieving originality. Richard notes that the primary deliverable for most historic 20th Century rebrands was print collateral, a format that necessitated more time and financial investment to bring to completion. On the other hand, the digital applications more often associated with modern rebrands, while comparatively easy to update, may counter-intuitively promote less care and attention towards their making. Mike points to another possible issue contributing to rebrand redundancy: lack of rollout support beyond rebrand launch. Even a unique identity may lose its spark when its primary consumer touchpoint is what a social media manager produces on Canva after skimming the brand guidelines once. Further still, many clients no longer approach design studios to harness their expertise but, instead, with preconceived notions of the result they expect; design studios may want to create original work, but sometimes clients are willing to pay more for a rebrand that mirrors their own preconceived ideas of what the work should look like. Emunah Winer, creative director of Israeli design studio Nihilo, which recently completed rebrands for Olive and Trullion, encapsulates this shift, saying, "when the client comes to the table with the answers, they really just want executors."

With so many logistical factors fighting against us, many designers find themselves both fighting for originality and simultaneously quick to point a finger at what they perceive to be a lack of originality in their peers. But practical limitations aside, our urge to assess the originality and “trendiness” of rebrands may be a misguided metric. Is there evidence that a truly novel idea exists, and is it always beneficial for a rebrand to prioritise this? Or, is our desire to avoid making trendy or unoriginal work a deficit? While designers might debate the intricacies of truly unique branding, beneath these immediate concerns, there's an underlying truth: what's seen as popular often holds a key to broader appeal and effectiveness.

At its core, a trend is evidence of a successful idea. Rebrands that resemble one another aren’t necessarily using similar visual treatments because they’re trendy; rather, their trendiness is proof of their effectiveness. Many of the redundant tropes seen in contemporary rebrands may primarily emerge out of functional constraints – certain formal qualities are simply better suited for the needs of present-day brands, especially fast-moving digital ones. As Dave Ladd, executive creative director at global design agency Koto (the studio behind rebrands for major players from Discord to WhatsApp), notes that blue is the easiest colour to make ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliant, which is likely what causes it to show up in so many visual identities in tech. The same could be said of the flat-vector illustration style that’s bubbled up over the last 10 years, or its arguable successor, the loose brushy doodles seen in rebrands from Koto’s Glassdoor to Collins’ Mailchimp (a current topic of debate online). Both styles are, in some respect, minimum viable illustration; as Dave describes it, they’re evergreen, convey diversity in the safest, most risk-free way possible, and are simplistic enough to be created by a range of illustrators and designers. In a sense, the real value of these distinct illustration styles isn’t necessarily their formal qualities (though there are many talented illustrators working in such styles who bring unique perspectives to the work), but, instead, in their efficacy as fodder for brand building. It’s no surprise, then, that multiple design studios may find themselves drawn to the same tools and formal approaches in the pursuit of a modern, production-friendly rebrand. In these cases, the pursuit of originality takes a backseat to that of utility.

Even the pursuit of original ideas doesn’t guarantee originality, however. At times, visual trends can operate outside the laws of physics and resemble something closer to spontaneous generation. The simultaneous invention of Calculus by both Newton and Leibniz serves as a testament to the fact that ideas, at times, seem to hover in the collective consciousness, simply waiting for the right moment and mind to give them form. As keen observers, designers are uniquely positioned to put a finger to today’s aesthetic breeze and transform the ideas floating in the zeitgeist into tangible outputs. After all, designers are a bit like scrapbookers: we methodically select and combine elements from existing sources to craft novel interpretations. Rarely do we make things completely from scratch. Instead, we curate select elements from the world around us to create something we feel is novel. But what is novelty? Our collective definition of newness is ever-changing, and exists only in relation to what we see frequently. What we consider original tends to be the opposite of whatever we consider ordinary. Critics often refer to the “20-year trend cycle”, which implies there may even be an empirical consensus around when things begin to look new again – Gen-Z loves Y2K fashion precisely because they didn’t have to live through its first iteration. As the often-referenced pendulum swing dictates, when sans-serifs hit oversaturation, we individually, but collectively, feel the itch to use a slab.

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.

Rebrands in particular tend to emerge as a direct response to a company being out of lockstep with contemporary values or aesthetics. In that sense, the very nature of updating an identity for a new period seems to necessitate reflecting some aspects of the current environment back on itself. A rebrand that looks too different from the current commercial landscape can be a deficit, ultimately positioning a brand as too much of an outlier. With rebrands, there’s also the concern of changing too much for an existing identity and alienating existing customers. On the other hand, a rebrand that’s too successful in defining a new visual language opens itself up to copycats – as in the case of Graza’s squeeze bottle and the many imitators who followed. As beauty editor Tynan Sinks says in a recent interview with strategist Nikita Walia, “everyone is trying to look the same, but also to stand out – and you just can't have both”. Archivist Richard notes that reflecting the zeitgeist through intentionally trendy aesthetics has actually been considered an asset for many brands historically. He points to Italian typewriter company Olivetti as an example: from 1930 to 1970, the logo changed almost every 10 years, precisely in order to “always stay relevant” and current to the contemporary landscape.