Want to make your brand a bit more "contemporary"?
Are you planning a rebland?
The trend of stripping brands of all personality in favour of something “modern” is a trend that has been noticeable for some time now.
Its easy to blame AI for creating a tsunami of generic creative work, but this started way before chatGPT. If anything, AI is just holding up a mirror to something we’ve been doing for years: leaning into the safe, the familiar, the "on trend" and yes, utterly average choices.
The Age of Average: A Cultural Problem
Take a look around. Global culture has been on a slow march toward homogeneity for quite some time.
From fashion to interiors, even the food we eat, there is a sense that we are collectively sanding off the edges of what makes things distinctive. Did you notice that AirBnBs across the world have developed a certain "look" these days? White walls. Raw wood. Nespresso machines. Eames chairs. Bare brick. Open shelving. Edison bulbs. The style combines the rough-hewn rawness of industrialism with the elegant minimalism of mid-century design.
This look has even got its own name now: "AirSpace".
Coffee shops, cars, social media, cities...have all fallen to this tempting shift towards blanding.
These images are taken from a fantastic article from Alex Murrell called "The Age of Average". I encourage you to read it in full as it is very interesting.
In branding, this trend manifests as what I affectionately call “reblanding” : the act of taking a distinctive brand and removing all the personality, creativity and memorable elements, stripping it down to a flat, forgettable, beige version of itself.
Think of how many logos have been “modernised” into bland sans-serif fonts, how many websites look like they’ve been designed using the same generic template, or how many adverts are indistinguishably chirpy, safe, and bland. This isn't bold strategy, it’s a shortcut to invisibility.
Why is Appeals
I get it, clients want to minimise risk, to feel reassured and safe.
They want to see evidence that what they are about to spend money on will work, and what works better than jumping on the bandwagon of whats already working? The irony, of course, is that this “safe” approach is anything but.
Bland is inoffensive but it’s also forgettable.
Is AI the Culprit?
Blaming AI for this creative monotony is tempting, but let’s give the machines some credit. AI produces average because it is trained on us. In many ways it even behaves just like a human: taking inspiration from whats on trend and simply copying or averaging it out within it's own creative output.
This isn’t an AI problem, it’s a human problem. It’s what happens when we focus too much on trends and not enough on originality? When something seems to work, whether it is a visual style, a tone of voice, or a marketing hook, everyone piles on.
Before long, it’s everywhere, and it stops being effective.
The Globalisation of Bland
Maybe the real culprit is globalisation. The more interconnected we are, the more we borrow from one another, and the more our creative output begins to converge. What started as inspiration ends up as imitation. The sheer volume of ideas we’re exposed to might actually make us less creative, as the law of averages takes over.
This isn’t just a branding phenomenon. It’s cultural. We celebrate those rare moments of bold, original thinking because they’ve become so rare. But perhaps it’s time we took a page out of history’s book. Thinkers like Tesla often spent time in solitude to develop their ideas. Imagine what we could create if we unplugged from the constant stream of content burning our eyeballs through our computers and phones and allowed ourselves to be with out own thoughts for a while.
be alone, that is when ideas are born. Nikola Tesla
I spent a weekend in a campsite without any phone coverage a couple of years ago and the first day was like I had an itch I couldn't scratch. It felt uncomfortable not knowing what was going on in my phone, what messages were I missing? What events did I not know about? I kept checking to see if my phone had found network, but no.
After about 2 days I settled in to it and it was like my mind relaxed, then something magical happened...I started thinking of all sorts of interesting ideas, I was suddenly inspired again and the ideas flowed freely without distraction. It was like I needed to get really bored for the internal generator to kick in. I did some of my best thinking that weekend.
I think all creatives would benefit from taking time out away from devices to really allow themselves to think.
Be Brave, Not Beige
The antidote to blandness is bravery. Good branding isn’t about chasing something “contemporary,” it’s about being distinctive.
It’s about knowing who you are, what you stand for, and having the courage to express that boldly and unapologetically.
So, the next time you’re tempted to follow a trend, ask yourself: is this making my brand more memorable, or just more average?
Are you rebranding, or are you reblanding?
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