Is originality dead?

Creative Review (behind paywall) posed this question once again. And once again, it was so irritating. And irritation leads to inspiration? Or at least a good rant.

In the article, CR prominently discussed how close Glassdoor’s rebranded illustration style was to a startup in a related HR space: Puck.

I also recall seeing that style being used by Notion first, and both then and now it reminded me of earlier trends, maybe a simple Saul Bass, definitely 60’s comic books. Coincidentally, both of these 60’s era look and feels were ripe for tech brands that still wanted to humanize, but let go of the Allegria-style illustration obsession of the late teens.

Movements in art are nothing new. We live in a community, we share visual inspiration – 20 year cycles of re-inspiration from earlier trends are a documented phenomenon. I find it disingenuous for any single agency to claim ownership on a trend…Collins certainly has a huge megaphone at this point, and they have had demonstrable wins in breaking through the noise and getting credit for things - in part through being the loudest - but they are equally “inside the trend”. Robinhood illustration style looks somewhat unique until you realize that some of it is a direct copy from compositions found by the french graphic novelists Herge and Moebius. Congratulations on being the first to take credit for paging through some graphics books, looking for an alternative to disproportionate characters that were so fun to draw but sooo overplayed by that moment in time. Everyone was casting around for an alternative, a way to see things new.

For instance: Art Nouveau.

For a long time, i considered the Art Nouveau/Art Jugend moment such an inspiration as an example of design revolution- inventing a new modern design culture seemingly without precedent. A trip to Vienna, into the heart of a museum and a city that still wears those lines, disabused me of my idea about it breaking with the past.

Just as I’ve noticed since my high school years in the 90’s, 20 year cycles in fashions and trends seem to occur when the young, broke, creative and hungry visit the Goodwill’s of the world to grab the discarded thing finally cleared from the middle age closet. When grandparent’s estate sales start to flood the market with things that can be reinterpreted by someone else’s descendent, it's then that things resurface.

In Vienna, i saw this venetian glassware that exhibited the exact line and form that I had so admired in Art Nouveau when I was getting my start as a novice graphic designer just past the turn of the millennium, in the twilight of rave culture, David Carson, and Designers Republic.

I could feel the creative, hungry youth sketching in grandma’s house, under the curio cabinet. Reaching across the ages, all of us striving to make something both new and relevant, looking at our visual environment to mine for gems to reconsider.

But originality has a place.

In interviewing Collins to take on a corporate branding project, I was struck by how firmly their producer/account person emphasized the need for a strategy before they would begin - they were not going to just make visual artifacts. I was struck by it in the way one is who feels a thing so fervently that they are relieved to hear it articulated by someone who speaks with authority.

As a brand designer who thrives in small companies figuring things out on a shoestring, I’ve struggled again and again to advocate for this invisible but powerful component of a redesign. It can’t be immediately seen, and if you don’t already know the value of a clear strategy, you have no way of calculating the value to the overall outcomes.

And so I’ve reluctantly put visuals in front of that other step, knowing that it could be better with the dedication of a mind that is attuned better to those threads.

Now knowing Collin’s emphasis on strategy, I continue to wonder how Dropbox’s 2018 rebrand came to be - an expression of pseudo originality leading to complete unsuitably.

Dropbox's 2018 redesign could perhaps best be described as 80's 3d vaporwave. Commercial design is not necessarily meant to be too out there - it doesn’t serve the brand. The Dropbox redesign seldom gets trotted out because it was deeply unsuccessful, and never actually adapted into the product. It earned Collins and Dropbox a bit of publicity and then slid out like a wet fart. It is not appropriate to the product!

Or was it?

The thing that draws me to Collins as a client is that they are a publicity machine. Aside from any results of your product in market, you’re guaranteed to get some shine on effect from the way they relentlessly appear in the design press. In the case of Dropbox, I can say as a customer that it did continue to make me consider their product.

Planting a flag and saying you invented a trend is like planting a flag where people are already living and saying it’s yours. No one is in a vacuum.

When I heard Paul Simon and Talking Heads, I immediately felt that the indie bands I digested in the early years of the 2000’s had spent far too much time absorbing them - or at least the vibe of 20 years previous. If I was a better music connossieur, I could probably tell you Paul Simon’s 20 year antecedent.

Jesse McMillan, my influential Creative Director at Lyft, once told our team “Don’t be afraid to be trendy” as guidance when we were looking for a new brand typeface.

I’ve continually found this advice to be true. The trends in typefaces that designers are seeing and paying attention to are the same ones the mass market will be seeing in 5 years and the ones that will be overplayed in 10. In your work, you’re not speaking to other designers, you’re speaking to customers. You are typically situating your company as being trustworthy, contemporary and on the edge but not over it.

You are communicating an idea about who you are, why the market should choose you, what you value and provide. You’re also doing it in an era filled with assumptions, trends, and expectations.

Further, you are communicating a category - how you should be considered, and clearly.

Just as you use a designer’s tool to communicate with heirarchy, color, and composition, the macro environment presents another canvas - where are you situated, how do you draw attention to - whose attention to you want, and under what context?

And then frequently you somehow find yourself within a wave - same as it ever was.