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There's been much virtual ink and video play time discussing the phenomenon. Just do a search "why are designs so boring?" My personal slant pins it on the cul

There's been much virtual ink and video play time discussing the phenomenon. Just do a search "why are designs so boring?" My personal slant pins it on the cult of minimalism. I realized we were effed when Lufthansa went with their incredibly dull and depressing livery. Most people in the planespotting world disliked it (1), while designers were falling over themselves gushing about the elegance, clarity and simplicity of the brand (2). My UX designer even used them as an example to emulate (we disagreed on many things). Also, designers, like most people, are inherently uncreative. A new trend will start, and people will follow. Just look at how every AI project has been trying to shoehorn "Q" into their names these past couple of weeks. Or how everything "smart" had to have a lower-case "i" in front of the brand for a long while. I'm starting to see the backlash against minimalism more frequently, hopefully it'll hit design schools soon and the next home run brand will move away from extremist minimalism (1) https://thepointsguy.com/2018/02/lufthansa-new-livery-boring-frequent-flyers-agree/ https://thepointsguy.com/2018/02/lufthansa-new-livery-boring... (2) https://www.adelahaye.com/blog/2020/2/11/feeling-blue-lufthansa-rebranding https://www.adelahaye.com/blog/2020/2/11/feeling-blue-luftha...

dun44 3y ago
Hopefully AI will make those uncreative designers redundant, freeing them to do something more aligned with their talents.
- passwordoops 3y ago
  That's way too hopeful. AI is not creative, it's a tool that gives you what it calculates to be the best solution which is taken from the space of all pre-existing solutions. So if anything it will double down on the lack of creativity and keep showing whatever worked before referring us down a cycle of dull, but very machine-predictable mediocrity. AI is not the solution for making things more creative.
  - ungamedplayer 3y ago
    I think that was what op was saying. They will make the boring samish logos.
  - Xenoamorphous 3y ago
    It’s also way too hopeful to think that most people being made redundant by AI will suddenly discover something else they’re talented at (and not disrupted by AI nor the sudden influx of competition) and live merrily ever after.
  - dun44 3y ago
    >AI is not creative Neither are those designers. My point is, AI will make producing uncreative designs even cheaper, which in turn will make career in uncreative designs unprofitable, which means fewer uncreative designers.
  - Al-Khwarizmi 3y ago
    > AI is not creative Are you sure? I'd say for example here it shows creativity: https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.08433 https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.08433
- 127361 3y ago
  Some of the AI art I've been browsing is far better than many human artists could create, it totally lacks the blandness and dumb trend-following of human creators.
  - furyofantares 3y ago
    Some examples?
- gwern 3y ago
  AI will need to get much better, unfortunately, for that to happen. And AI will trigger even more minimalism in the short run. This is because minimalism encourages extremely precise, exact abstracted designs where a single pixel being wrong is visible. While generative AI always has, and will indefinitely, be best at a profusion of exuberant detail where errors or repetition are concealed by the density. You can generate great photographic images or montages right now with MJ or DALL-E 3, but you will struggle to get anything which is a crisp sharp vector. Even vector-generating services like Recraft.ai aren't that good. (Note also how long it took generative AI to be able to do pixel art. We were trivially generating photorealistic faces while pixel art GANs weren't working at all.) So, as a reaction to generative AI, designers & fashion will flee to minimalism in order to not look 'cheap'. The vector art & typography will be a proof-of-work that a human made it and a costly signal of 'quality'. While anything photographic or painting-like, especially if presented as a single large raster image, will increasingly feel untrustworthy, cheap, and mass-produced.
belugacat 3y ago
commercial design needs to hit a set of 2 contradictory goals: 1) be as boring as possible so people can make sense of it quickly and efficiently in a world where there are countless other things competing for your time and attention 2) standout as much as possible to gain your attention in the aforementioned busy world IME this explains a lot the nature of trends that design experiences.
Xenoamorphous 3y ago
> Also, designers, like most people, are inherently uncreative 99% of the time the designer has to do what the client instructs them to do. And in most cases, they will simply point to some recent change by the competition. Also everybody will have an opinion about a design.
fireflash38 3y ago
In a way, it reminds me of flag designs. You can be creative with minimal color choice and patterns (Arizona), or you can be a riot of pattern and color (Maryland). Just don't be the same as everyone else (seal on blue field). Reason I bring this up is the Southwest flag livery - which the MD one in particular really stands out.

dun44 3y ago

Hopefully AI will make those uncreative designers redundant, freeing them to do something more aligned with their talents.

passwordoops 3y ago
That's way too hopeful. AI is not creative, it's a tool that gives you what it calculates to be the best solution which is taken from the space of all pre-existing solutions. So if anything it will double down on the lack of creativity and keep showing whatever worked before referring us down a cycle of dull, but very machine-predictable mediocrity. AI is not the solution for making things more creative.
- ungamedplayer 3y ago
  I think that was what op was saying. They will make the boring samish logos.
- Xenoamorphous 3y ago
  It’s also way too hopeful to think that most people being made redundant by AI will suddenly discover something else they’re talented at (and not disrupted by AI nor the sudden influx of competition) and live merrily ever after.
- dun44 3y ago
  >AI is not creative Neither are those designers. My point is, AI will make producing uncreative designs even cheaper, which in turn will make career in uncreative designs unprofitable, which means fewer uncreative designers.
- Al-Khwarizmi 3y ago
  > AI is not creative Are you sure? I'd say for example here it shows creativity: https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.08433 https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.08433
127361 3y ago
Some of the AI art I've been browsing is far better than many human artists could create, it totally lacks the blandness and dumb trend-following of human creators.
- furyofantares 3y ago
  Some examples?
gwern 3y ago
AI will need to get much better, unfortunately, for that to happen. And AI will trigger even more minimalism in the short run. This is because minimalism encourages extremely precise, exact abstracted designs where a single pixel being wrong is visible. While generative AI always has, and will indefinitely, be best at a profusion of exuberant detail where errors or repetition are concealed by the density. You can generate great photographic images or montages right now with MJ or DALL-E 3, but you will struggle to get anything which is a crisp sharp vector. Even vector-generating services like Recraft.ai aren't that good. (Note also how long it took generative AI to be able to do pixel art. We were trivially generating photorealistic faces while pixel art GANs weren't working at all.) So, as a reaction to generative AI, designers & fashion will flee to minimalism in order to not look 'cheap'. The vector art & typography will be a proof-of-work that a human made it and a costly signal of 'quality'. While anything photographic or painting-like, especially if presented as a single large raster image, will increasingly feel untrustworthy, cheap, and mass-produced.

belugacat 3y ago

commercial design needs to hit a set of 2 contradictory goals: 1) be as boring as possible so people can make sense of it quickly and efficiently in a world where there are countless other things competing for your time and attention 2) standout as much as possible to gain your attention in the aforementioned busy world IME this explains a lot the nature of trends that design experiences.

Xenoamorphous 3y ago

> Also, designers, like most people, are inherently uncreative 99% of the time the designer has to do what the client instructs them to do. And in most cases, they will simply point to some recent change by the competition. Also everybody will have an opinion about a design.

fireflash38 3y ago

In a way, it reminds me of flag designs. You can be creative with minimal color choice and patterns (Arizona), or you can be a riot of pattern and color (Maryland). Just don't be the same as everyone else (seal on blue field). Reason I bring this up is the Southwest flag livery - which the MD one in particular really stands out.