Five thoughts on the design language of authenticity, humanity and soul.
01st August
3. When everyone plays the same tricks, we end up with inauthentic branding again.
So here we are with lots of quirky brands all competing to get over their own particular “little guy” personas. Some use hand-drawn images, others tell whimsical stories on their back labels. “Orange and apple flavour” becomes “the really fruity one”.
The trouble is, if computer software made everything look similar, the new vogue for acting homespun can show an equal lack of imagination. Graphically, a Mac’d version of floral silhouettes (ideally also featuring a butterfly) will surely go down as the great visual cliché of our time.
It took no time for own-label to copy Dorset cereals, whose typewriter font is being adopted far and wide. Similarly, handwritten claims, little annotation arrows and the like have been milked to death since Innocent led the way.
Brands chattering away at us are beginning to have all the charm of a doll repeating the same phrase each time her chord is pulled. The copy-heavy approach is as vulnerable to copycatting as the hand-drawn solution!
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