Why Do So Many Brands Change Their Logos and Look Like Everyone Else?

Style matters to our economy, our society, and to each of us personally — it allows us to communicate who we are and who we want to be. While it is widely understood that style is the driving force behind consumer purchasing decisions in things like clothing, I’d argue that the same has become true in technology and software as well.

For a while, the DTC playbook was golden: Start with a commodity product, something like dish soap or underpants. Give it a modern design and wrap it in minimalist packaging. Include a pastel background in the impeccably staged product photos, which splash across a Shopify-powered e-commerce site flanked by sans-serif fonts, punchy copy and a messa... See more

Within the past few years, tech companies’ digital design all started to look the same: marginally, monotonously quirky; safe. From the sans-serif fonts to the muted pastel color palette, the stark white backgrounds to the curvy shape and hue of the buttons, most modern software blurs together into a familiar, squint-and-you’ll-confuse-it aesthetic... See more