Radek Sienkiewicz in a funny-because-its-true piece titled “Why do AI company logos look like buttholes?“:
We made a circular shape [logo] with some angles because it looked nice, then wrote flowery language to justify why our…design is actually profound.
As someone who has grown up through the tumult of the design profession in technology, that really resonates. I’ve worked on lots of projects where I got tired of continually justifying design decisions with language dressed in corporate rationality.
This is part of the allure of code. To most people, code either works or it doesn’t. However bad it might be, you can always justify it with “Yeah, but it’s working.”
But visual design is subjective forever. And that’s a difficult space to work in, where you need to forever justify your choices.
In that kind of environment, decisions are often made by whoever can come up with the best language to justify their choices, or whoever has the most senior job title.
Personally, I found it very exhausting.
As Radek points out, this homogenization justified through seemingly-profound language reveals something deeper about tech as an industry: folks are afraid to stand out too much.
Despite claims of innovation and disruption, there's tremendous pressure to look legitimate by conforming to established visual language.
In contrast to this stands the work of individual creators whose work I have always loved — whether its individual blogs, videos, websites, you name it. The individual (and I’ll throw small teams in there too) have a sense of taste that doesn’t dilute through the structure and processes of a larger organization.
No single person suggests making a logo that resembles an anus, but when everyone's feedback gets incorporated, that's what often emerges.
In other words, no individual would ever recommend what you get through corporate hierarchies.
That’s why I love the work of small teams and individuals. There’s still soul. You can still sense the individuals — their personalities, their values — oozing through the work. Reminds me of Jony Ive’s description of when he first encountered a Mac:
I was shocked that I had a sense for the people who made it. They could’ve been in the room. You really had a sense of what was on their minds, and their values, and their joy and exuberance in making something that they knew was helpful.
This is precisely why I love the websites of individuals because their visual language is as varied as the humans behind them — I mean, just look at the websites of these individuals and small teams. You immediately get a sense for the people behind them. I love it!
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