The Valuelessness of Trends in Business

rends are trending theses days. From fashion to music, we in general are so used to the narrative, and easily swept up with what is hot, what is perceived as kewl, or what is on trend. And alarmingly these terms have swept their way into the visual communication field, with designers becoming subservient to trends, or at least the clients that aspire to them. But this business of trends is in fact irrelevant to any meaningful long term branding or marketing objectives for any business. Why would you want to strap your brand to a trend? When the trend is done, so is your brand.

Hardly a strategy for any business model with durability and longevity in mind. And surely that is most out there. Why would you pursue a course that will put an exploration date on your brand appeal?

Trends are trends, true design never bends

It is the designers’ job to create a world previously unknown, to encourage people to view things from different angles and to think twice about what they have taken granted. A designers primary job is to help your brand and product stand out, and differentiate it from the rest, so that your endeavors become memorable in a way that is authentic to you.

Following a trend is the exact opposite. It lumps you with the herd, making you and your organization seem like a follower, not a leader. On the part of the designer it shows a complete lack of imagination and is nothing short of laziness.

Every individual designer should bring their own experience and contribution when looking to solve particular creative problems, and the solutions they provided should differ from designer to designer, for that same problem. As they are suppose to be bringing their own unique capabilities.

The design industry as a whole should fervently reject trend-ism, as keeping the solutions authentic is the only way to improve and keep the freshness of the industry, stem the commoditization of creative thinking, and ensure its future relevance.

Knowing what are not trends.

And the industry can start by modernizing its vernacular by rejecting trends as a legitimate concept within terminology. There is much inadvertent legitimization of trends in the way the industry communicates concepts, which leads to confusion for clients, and even for those within the industry.

For example, nowadays user experience design plays a major part in the rise of the smart phone. And we can read untold articles that claim the current trend of UX design is simplicity.

Such nonsense. Simplicity is not a trend, it is an attribute, that in this case, performs a critical function. As wagging tongues and design pundits clamber to make themselves relevant on blogs (we realize you are reading this on a blog), they conflate and appropriate terminology, and it all adds up to the blurring of fundamental lines and understanding. They need to actually grasp the consequences of their meaning. Simplicity is never a trend. In design, it is the rule. And this is specially so of UX design. Everything that makes the UX easier to use is an improvement, not a trend. It’s not as if UX designers are suddenly in 3 years going to decide to make things harder to use. It’s absurd. Keep the trend talk to things that are actually trends, goodness knows there are already enough of them, we are at saturation.

The trend take down.

Trends are those things created out of the context. They are general concepts that are not tailored for any specific product, brand or objective. They are arbitrary applications of superficial and often meaningless styles. While style itself is not meaningless, it becomes so once context, authenticity, and objectivity are neglected to adhere to a trend. They are a reactionary way of trying to make an endeavour current, for short term gain, without any consideration for valuable long term objectives. There is no vision involved.

But worse than that, even through the short life cycle of a trend, once you have adopted one, you have placed your organization within the fold of that trend, shared by many other organizations with which you have no affiliation. You make your organization less distinguishable, not more, and your narrative plays second fiddle to the trend. At best you can hope that your offering can seem hip for a short lived fifteen minutes. And we don’t think there’s anyone out there that aspires to their service and product looking generic.

It’s hardly providing you the edge, is it.

Some of the trendiest culprits.

Sadly “Design trend” has now become a trendy topic with in the design industry. The colour of the year from Pantone, which is a transparent craven marketing gimmick and makes us think of Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly quote about the colour cerulean (blue), in the movie The Devil Wears Prada. The difference being of course that fashion trends are set in spring and autumn to keep the clothing consumerism machine alive and well, and are completely irrelevant in branding and marketing, unless of course you want to rebrand your company twice a year.

Staying on the theme of fashion to illustrate the folly of trend-ism in branding and brand marketing. Ladies and some gentlemen, imagine, you’re at a bar, and you notice a guy (sorry lads’ it’s about to get subjective) over in the corner. He seems confident, well put together, holds himself well and is holding the attention of a number of people, so likely is quite eloquent. You are intrigued, you like what this guy is selling, so you move closer to get a better look. At that moment he turns his head, and boom, there it is. A man bun. Suddenly you feel confused, something is off, it doesn’t seem to fit with the rest of his brand, you’re getting mixed messaging and all that anticipation of what promise the initial viewing had is dashed. You move on quickly. And it is the same with branding and marking, leave the trends out, otherwise your audience will sense the conflict with authenticity and entertain other options.  Trends are the man bun of branding and marketing. Make sure your brand or marketing strategy does not include a man bun.

Then there is the hologram effect that seems to be saturating much of the creative offering of many aspiring design agencies. Everything from fancy boutique retail, high end restaurants, tech start ups, publishing, and even design agencies themselves, end up looking like they have raided the stock room of a toothpaste packaging plant. Yes, hologram effect print is kewl, but it also has to fit. It’s not good enough for it to be the basis of the idea. There actually needs to be design concept at he centre of it all, of which the paper and printing choice is part of the detail, not the entire hook. Since when has fitting in and not considering longevity and target audiences become a positive design rule that any designer would follow? The answer of course is never. If you can’t directly connect and justify the hologram objectivity in the project, best to leave it to when you get that big toothpaste packaging gig.

Moving on to fonts. Well fonts themselves are a necessary part of visual communication for obvious reasons, so it’s not the fonts themselves that are at fault. There are a myriad of typefaces available out there to help conjure up a feeling, relate to a specific audience, and capture the essence of the message. Many fonts have become iconic, and associated with different periods in history and even particular organizations. New fonts come and go, and the design blogs are all a flutter with the hot new font creations. And there is nothing wrong with the industry celebrating design ingenuity. But then inevitably this turns to crowning fonts of the year, and that is where the problem starts. When dealing with objective solutions based visual communication, this is irrelevant. Yet the number of times we’ve over heard designers talking up the using of the font of the year as if it were in any way a positive relevant project attribute, makes us shudder. Just no! Fonts should be engaged with and incorporated in a project in the context of  achieving specific objectives. Nothing to do with how many other designers have used that font this year or not. If your designer can’t think of any specifics as to how their chosen font relates to the imagery you are trying to create for your brand, but sells it to you as the font of the year, walk away.

And let’s not forget the now ubiquitous gradient. Goodness, it is everywhere. From new brand identities to social media meme quotes, and everywhere in between. While it may seem harmless enough as a background for social quotes, it often has no connection to what is actually been said and only serves as a superficial, meaningless, and obnoxious delivery. It’s the social media equivalent of all caps. ‘Hey, I’m saying something important’, gets presented in ridiculous rainbow effect. And this is the best case scenario for any gradient use. When it comes to brand identity, it is by a long shot, one of the more Cardinal of sins. How do you expect your brands, spanking new identity to reproduce effectively in miniature, say as a favicon, or in black and white, when it looks like Rainbow Bright has been ill all over your letterhead? In this regard we don’t even need to reiterate the passing trend issue. When a logo with a gradient can’t even pass the test of basic function, and reproduction, it’s got to be a fail.