The relentless drive toward simplified design
John McCoy (host of the Sophomore Lit podcast on The Incomparable!) used the recent kerfuffle over the Cracker Barrel rebranding (if you don’t know, he covered it in his post) to discuss a trend in corporate branding:
Just because I doubt that these choices were motivated by politics doesn’t mean the detractors don’t have a point: something basic is being lost here. In both cases the companies have discarded character and context in an effort to streamline their identity. I have written previously about the often misguided penchant art directors have towards simplifying their brands. I suspect that the lion’s share of this tendency is simply following trends, and the current fashion in corporate design is simple, flat typography and short (often single-word) brand names. To the extent that someone actually gave this a thought, the rationale is to remove any attributes that might complicate a consumer’s attitude towards the brand….
If you want to be charitable, and I try to be when I can, the move towards brand simplification also reflects a longstanding adage in design—be it visual art, design, writing, or engineering: “less is more.” This saying, often misattributed to Mies van der Rohe, emphasizes clarity and utility. The goal is to focus on what is essential. Practitioners of this belief make outsized claims about the effects of this approach.
McCoy, who works at an art museum and has curated some really interesting exhibits, has an interesting perspective about the limits of design simplification. I really enjoyed his post, especially the digression about how Lyle’s Golden Syrup is related to the Bible.