The Case for Being a Little Weird
Somewhere along the way, every brand decided it needed to look professional. Clean typography, tasteful colours, minimal packaging, beautiful photography and a website with enough whitespace to make a Scandinavian furniture designer emotional.
And to be fair, most of it looks pretty good. That's kind of the problem.
We've gotten incredibly good at making things look polished. Between templates, design systems, accessible software and endless inspiration online, even a small business can create something that looks like it came from an expensive creative agency. But when everyone looks professional, looking professional stops being particularly interesting.
I don't think the solution is to make everything louder or stranger. I like minimalism, good typography and thoughtful design as much as anyone. But I do think we've started confusing good design with safe design, and there's a difference between making something that looks nice and making something people actually remember.
Maybe it's time for brands to get a little weird again.
Professional Doesn't Mean Memorable
Look at almost any category of consumer products and you'll notice patterns. Skincare brands use soft neutrals and elegant sans serifs. Technology companies use gradients and rounded shapes. Wellness brands have apparently agreed that everything should be beige, sage green or some combination of the two.
Individually, plenty of these brands look great. Put them beside each other and things start getting less interesting. The issue isn't minimalism itself. It's making creative decisions based entirely on what other successful companies are already doing.
If your competitors all look a certain way, making something that fits perfectly into the category might feel like the responsible choice. It also makes it considerably easier for customers to confuse you with everyone else. There's value in looking familiar enough that people understand what you sell, but there's also a point where familiarity becomes anonymity.
Being recognizable is more valuable than being universally agreeable.
The Internet Has a Reference Problem
Designers have access to an absurd amount of inspiration now. Behance, Pinterest, Instagram, design blogs, creative portfolios and entire websites dedicated to collecting other websites. This should be a good thing, and mostly it is, but it's also created a strange feedback loop.
A particular style becomes popular. Designers save it, agencies reference it, clients start requesting it, and more work gets made in that style. Eventually, what started as something distinctive becomes the default.
You can see it in everything from branding and packaging to photography and web design. The same layouts, colours, typefaces and art direction keep circulating until it becomes difficult to remember where the original idea came from.
I think some of the most interesting creative work happens when people stop looking exclusively within their own industry for references. Old magazines, record sleeves, movie posters, video games, architecture, independent publications, street signage and packaging from thirty years ago are all worth exploring. Particularly things that weren't designed to perform well on Instagram.
There's a much bigger visual world out there than whatever happens to be trending on a design inspiration account this week.
Packaging Should Have a Personality
Packaging is one of the easiest places to see the difference between looking good and being memorable.
Imagine walking into a store where every product has the same minimalist label, understated typography and carefully selected muted colour palette. Everything looks premium, but nothing really stands out. Now imagine one product sitting among them with strange typography, an unexpected illustration or a colour combination that probably shouldn't work.
You're going to notice it.
That doesn't automatically make it good packaging. Being different for the sake of being different can produce some truly terrible design. But distinctive packaging gives people something to recognize and remember.
Look at brands like Liquid Death or Oatly. Whether you personally like their design isn't particularly important. They've developed recognizable approaches that don't simply imitate the expected visual language of their categories. Liquid Death took something as ordinary as canned water and gave it the visual attitude of a heavy metal band. Oatly built an identity around unusual typography, conversational copy and packaging that doesn't behave like traditional dairy advertising.
Neither approach would make sense for every brand, and that's exactly the point. The lesson isn't to make everything louder or stranger. It's to stop assuming the established category aesthetic is the only acceptable option.
Photography and Typography Can Have Character
Brand photography has become incredibly polished, and there's obviously a place for that. Good lighting, composition, styling and production make a difference. But some of my favourite photography has very little to do with technical perfection.
An unexpected crop, harsh direct flash, a slightly awkward pose, grain, motion blur or strange lighting can give an image personality. Meanwhile, a lot of commercial photography has become so carefully controlled that it barely feels like anything happened in front of a camera.
Products float against seamless backgrounds. People smile with exactly the correct amount of enthusiasm. Every surface is immaculate, every shadow is soft, and every object is positioned to communicate an aspirational lifestyle. It works, but it's also easy to ignore.
I think there's room for photography that feels specific to the brand rather than simply meeting the expected standard of commercial photography. That might mean using direct flash instead of soft studio lighting, photographing products in unusual environments or choosing images with an interesting mood rather than perfect technical execution.
Typography works much the same way. There are excellent reasons to choose simple, readable typefaces, but typography also communicates personality. A condensed industrial typeface feels different from an elegant serif. An imperfect hand-drawn wordmark feels different from a polished geometric sans serif.
Look at music posters, independent magazines or old advertising. Some of the most memorable examples use typography in ways that would probably make a modern corporate brand manager nervous.
You don't need to turn your website into an experimental typography project. Sometimes one unusual display typeface or a distinctive treatment of headlines is enough to create a recognizable visual language. The goal isn't to make reading difficult. It's to give people something worth looking at while they're reading.
Not Everyone Needs to Like Your Brand
This is probably the part businesses struggle with most. When you're spending money on branding or marketing, you naturally want the work to appeal to as many potential customers as possible.
That sounds reasonable, but it can lead to a familiar process. Someone suggests an interesting idea, another person thinks it's too strange, someone else worries it might alienate part of the audience, and eventually the whole thing gets adjusted until nobody has a particularly strong opinion about it.
Congratulations. You've created something everyone can tolerate.
The problem is that broad approval doesn't necessarily create enthusiasm. Some of the strongest brands have very specific personalities. Their design, language, products and marketing appeal strongly to certain people while doing relatively little for others. That's not always a weakness.
A skate brand doesn't need to appeal to someone shopping for luxury business clothing. An experimental record label doesn't need to look like a bank. A small independent coffee shop doesn't need the same visual identity as an international chain.
Knowing who you're for also means accepting who you're probably not for. That doesn't mean deliberately offending people or ignoring potential customers. It means understanding that a distinctive personality will naturally create preferences, and preferences are part of why people choose one brand over another.
Weird Marketing Still Needs a Good Idea
Of course, being weird isn't a marketing strategy by itself. You can make something strange, spend a lot of money promoting it and still accomplish absolutely nothing.
The difference is whether the unusual creative decision serves an idea.
A strange billboard might work because it communicates a product benefit in an unexpected way. Unusual packaging might work because it makes the product recognizable on a shelf. A ridiculous campaign might work because it understands the audience's sense of humour. Without that connection, you're just making something unusual and hoping people notice.
I've always liked marketing that gives people a reason to talk about it. Not because it's desperately trying to go viral, but because someone had an idea that was interesting enough to share.
That could be a small local activation, an unexpected collaboration, an unusual piece of direct mail or a campaign that deliberately ignores the conventions of its category. It doesn't need to be expensive or reach an enormous audience. Sometimes a small, specific idea has more personality than a national campaign that's been through seventeen rounds of stakeholder feedback.
Consistency Doesn't Mean Everything Has to Look the Same
There's a common misconception that distinctive creative work and brand consistency are somehow opposites. They're not. In fact, being a little weird often works better when it's consistent.
If your brand uses unusual typography, distinctive photography or a particular sense of humour, those elements become more recognizable through repetition. The trick is building a creative system with enough personality that you can do different things without losing the identity.
Music artists are a good example. They develop recognizable visual worlds across album artwork, videos, merchandise, photography and live performances. Each piece can be different, but there's usually some common thread connecting them. Brands can do the same thing.
Consistency should help people recognize you, not prevent you from doing anything interesting.
So, How Weird Should You Get?
I don't think every brand needs to become louder, stranger or more experimental. Sometimes a restrained, minimal identity is exactly the right decision. A financial institution has different responsibilities than an independent clothing label. A healthcare company needs to consider clarity and trust in ways a music festival might not.
Context matters, but I think businesses underestimate how much room they have to be distinctive without sacrificing professionalism.
If you're working on a brand and everything feels a little too familiar, there are a few places worth looking:
Look outside your category. If you're designing a wellness brand, don't only reference other wellness brands.
Find one distinctive element. An unusual colour, typeface, photographic approach or packaging detail can go a long way.
Make the creative appropriate to the audience. Different doesn't automatically mean better.
Keep the useful conventions. Clear navigation, readable copy and accessible design aren't things you need to rebel against.
Give an idea time to become recognizable. Constantly changing direction makes it difficult for anything to stick.
The point isn't to abandon good design principles. It's to use them in service of something with a little more character.
The Case for Being a Little Weird
Making something polished has become easier than ever. Templates, accessible creative tools and AI can produce competent-looking work incredibly quickly. That's a good thing in many ways. More people can make things, and small businesses have access to capabilities that used to require much larger budgets.
But it also means technical polish alone isn't much of a competitive advantage anymore.
The harder part is developing a point of view. Knowing what references make sense, which conventions are worth keeping, which ones are worth ignoring and how to make something feel like it belongs to one particular brand.
That requires taste, experience and a willingness to make decisions that not everyone will agree with.
I don't think businesses should set out to be weird. That usually results in work that's trying a little too hard. I think they should be more comfortable being specific, taking creative risks and occasionally making something that doesn't look like the other nine options on the shelf.
Because the goal of branding isn't to create something nobody dislikes. It's to create something the right people actually remember.
