The Sameness We're Settling For

Everywhere I look right now, I see the same thing from my perspective of a visual communicator.

Same layouts and fonts. Similar color palettes that ALL feel like being pulled from 3 same templates. SAME, SAME, SAME no matter where I look: on small business websites, on networking invites, events of ALL different kinds, on social feeds, on brands that are trying to genuinely stand out.

It has become so blahhhhh! None of them say anything at all. This is not because the people behind them don't have something to say or carry value and passion for what they do, but because the tools they're using were never built to say express THAT particular side of it.

I want to be clear about something first: I'm not against AI, or Canva, or ANY tool out there  that have made design and other things more accessible. Accessibility matters and its wonderful to have it and use it. I’m all for accessibility. Besides, not everyone has the budget for a full brand identity process, and there's real dignity in being able to build something yourself when that's what you have. I use these tools too in the areas I need support with.

Again, the problem isn't the tool. It's what we've decided the tool is for.

Somewhere along the way, it seems that there’s kind of a mix between "I can do this myself now" and "I don't need anyone else." And that's a much bigger shift than it sounds like. It's not just about design but rather a bigger picture. It's about how much we've come to rely on ourselves alone, DIY-ing our way through things that used to require community, relationship, creative minds working together or supporting each other. That other person or people that bring in all of their uniqueness, and in one way or another play a part as creators, observers, maybe clients and in all of this have that energy of exchange and community.

That logo generated in thirty seconds can give you a mark but it definitely cannot give you a mark that comes from someone sitting with your story, your history, the thing that makes your business different from the one next door offering the same service. That takes people to come together in creative conversation. It takes time and it takes someone actually being there learning and listening, not a prompt, a real person with feelings, energy, intuition and capacity of creation.

That's the gap I keep coming back to. Not "AI is bad" or "DIY is bad". Efficiency and distinctiveness are not the same, don’t carry the same intention and feel completely different. Right now, a lot of businesses are optimizing for the first one and losing the second.

They want to say so much and end up saying nothing at all. They have no soul!

Here's what I've noticed, thirty+ years into doing this work: the businesses that end up looking like everyone else don't just risk blending in visually. They lose “the thing” that made them worth choosing in the first place. The businesses I want to work with, the ones with real vision, real craft, something specific to say, are exactly the ones who feel that loss the most, even if they can't always name it or be aware of it.

I'm not writing this to talk anyone out of the tools that help them. Again, I use them when needed and in ways that support me specially when I lack strength in one. I'm writing it because I think it's worth pausing on what we're trading when we reach for "fast and free" by default, instead of as one option among several, including just believing you can be the creator.

Some things are still worth building with another person. Not because it's slower or more expensive, though sometimes it is both, but because what comes out the end actually sounds, feels or looks more like you, instead of like everyone else.

That's the work I still believe in and it is not instead of or against the tools. It is alongside them and in the moments there is the possibility of creating and building together, in community.