I recently was reading a Paul Graham article where i came across this amazing passage:
Branding isn't merely orthogonal to good design, but opposed to it. Branding by definition has to be distinctive. But good design, like math or science, seeks the right answer, and right answers tend to converge.
That made me stop reading and take a pause to think about this deeply. Most of the time, we mix up design and branding, but actually, they are pulling in opposite directions. You can't have branding without distinctiveness, it's built into the concept, the purpose of branding is being recognizable as different from others, so a brand, just by being a brand, has to look different from other brands. That's the whole point. In the other hand good design is seeking the right answers, like math. and when you do it well, you find the best solution, and everyone doing it well finds the same best solution, and that’s the opposite of branding. How can we have both? Paul argues in the same article that there’s just two ways to combine good design and branding, the first option is to have a plenty of possibilities in a specific space, so even if you seek the right answer you will not bump up agains someone’s else answer, in that specific case you can have your own identity and a good design. The second option is when you are the first to explore a new, unexplored area. Then, you can find the right answers and claim they are yours. But it’s just a matter of time, so everybody will converge to your direction, and you will lose your uniqueness among them. And that reminds me of an anecdote a friend once told me. There was this graphic designer (Paula Scher) that was hired by The Public Theater in New York City to work on their visual identity. Paula designed a very unique identity, it was revolutionary. It made The Public Theater feel alive, urban, and culturally relevant. The identity won tons of awards and became one of the most celebrated identity systems of the 1990s. Then everyone copied it, because it was so striking and successful, other theaters, cultural institutions, festivals, and even commercial brands started imitating the style and suddenly The Public Theater's look didn't say "Public Theater" anymore, it just said "cool cultural institution”. Around 1996-1997, Paula Scher had to redesign the identity in a new directions so The Public Theater could stand apart again. So, here’s the trade off. you can either focus on creating a well designed functional product that solves problems and provides the right answers. alternatively, you can choose to be unique and work on branding to occupy people’s minds.