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Category-wide shifts

Lesson 9 of 9 in Rebrands and case studies.

why every logo redesign looks the same (and making them fun again) · itsdivya

Lesson

Whole categories change appearance together, and faster than individual taste would explain. Through the 2010s a very large number of companies replaced distinctive wordmarks with geometric sans-serifs set in flat colour, a wave widely nicknamed blanding.

Recognition built slowly over years and dropped in a single relaunch.

A high street of shops with identical plain rounded signs in flat colour has one shop in the middle with an ornate painted sign and striped awning that passers-by turn toward. — Every shop on a street has swapped to the same plain rounded sign except one, which kept its curly painted sign. When a whole category looks alike, the odd one out gets noticed.

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Question 1, locked
Most of a category flattens to a geometric sans in flat colour. The lesson calls that an opportunity almost nobody takes. Why is it an opportunity?
- Distinctiveness is relative, so a field that has just made itself uniform puts the distinctive move within cheap reach
- A standard look reads as trustworthy, so a newcomer that adopts it inherits the trust
- The convergence proves the constraint is real, which makes following it the safe call
- Fashion cycles turn fast, so a copied look will be current again inside a year or two
Question 2, locked
Which of these words means this? “When most brands in a sector adopt the same look within a few years.”
- Evolutionary rebrand
- Rollout
- Category convergence
- Refresh
Question 3, locked
Which of these words means this? “The nickname for the wave of geometric sans wordmarks in flat colour.”
- Confound
- Sameness risk
- Blanding
- Recognition debt

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