Why Branding Got So Boring (And What Independent Businesses Can Do Differently)

There’s an image that circulates the internet constantly and continues the conversation around huge company rebrands, and where they’re going wrong. It shows some of the major players in fashion and what they’ve recently done to their logo, side by side. The left hand column is full of character, craft, and history, the one on the right is usually the company name in a geometric sans-serif - clean, neutral and completely forgettable. The reason this image will not go away is the trend doesn’t seem to be stopping any time soon, and with AI Image Generators at the hands of every Tom, Dick and Harry, it’s only getting worse.

The shift has a name (that I hate): Blanding. Even the way it rolls off the tongue is dull and ‘meh’. It came from a logical set of commercial decisions that collectively produced an illogical result. And lost the entire point of what ‘branding’ is inherently about.

Burberry is the clearest case. In 2018 got rid their century-old Equestrian Knight and replaced it with a Peter Saville sans-serif wordmark - optimised for digital, aimed at younger buyers, indistinguishable from a dozen other luxury rebrands happening simultaneously. By 2023, new creative director Daniel Lee had brought the knight back. Serif typeface, heritage mark, a full reversal. It was one of the more public admissions in recent branding history that the previous direction had been a mistake.

The first push was the advancement in digital. Logos that were built for print, with all the years of craft and imperfection that comes with print production simply didn’t survive the jump to a favicon (the tiny logo that sits on your Chrome tab when you’re looking at a website) or the small Instagram circular logo intended to be seen on a small phone screen. Fine serifs blur, intricate marks flatten and so in response, brands simplify - which to a certain extent makes sense, right? Somewhere in this process the character is lost and efficiency wins.

The second push was scale, and arguably the rise of capitalism (fear not, this is not a piece about branding turned political rant [cough]). A brand operating across 40 markets, in a dozen languages across print, digital, signage, packaging and all the other touch points needs a visual system that can travel with the least amount of friction possible. Geometric and broadly legible aren’t aesthetic choices as much as they are operational. The problem is that what works efficiently at global scale tends to look identical to every other brand operating at a similar rate.

Then there’s economics: simpler marks cost less to reproduce, less colour treatment means lower printing costs, cheaper embroidery, easier digital production. Minimalism which started as a genuine design philosophy (and one I’m a huge fan of when done right), a deliberate stripping back in pursuit of meaning, quickly became a cost-effective way to produce at volume but got repackaged as a premium choice.

The result is an entire generation of heritage brands that stripped out the very thing that made them distinctive and well-loved in the first place.

This isn't only a luxury fashion problem. Walk through any independent market, scroll through any creative directory, and you'll see it playing out at every budget level, in every industry.

Canva templates and AI-generated logos caused a whole wave of small businesses to look identical to each other because the tools made it easy and nobody stopped to ask whether easy was visually any good. Independent businesses have the most to gain from a strong visual identity and the most to lose from blending in. A gallery, a maker, an architect, or a venue - these are businesses built on a point of view. If the brand doesn't have one, there's no obvious reason to choose you over the next person offering the same thing.

Independence is an advantage here, even if it doesn't always feel like one. No global market to water things down for - just a story, a perspective, a reason for existing which is exactly what a brand should be built from. What were you before you had a logo? What do your best clients actually say about working with you? A brand built on honest answers to those questions will always be more interesting than one built around what looked good on someone's mood board. It'll also last longer because it's not chasing a trend, it's recording something real. The fashion houses getting mocked for their rebrands didn't just lose a nice serif, they traded their own history for the appearance of modernity. The brands worth looking at are the ones still recognisable after 20 years that never confused legibility with personality. That's available at every scale. You just have to want it more than you want to look safe.

Studio Sati is a London-based branding and web design studio working with independent, design-aware businesses.
If your brand feels like it could belong to anyone, get in touch.