I just read Naomi Klein’s No Logo, and despite being so late to that party It’s not hard to imagine how big an impact it had in its time at identifying the brand being the product more than the things the businesses made (*sold).
Because I’m always trying to make connections that might not be there, I can’t help think we’re at a stage where “Brand” is being replaced by “UX” in a world of tech where you can’t really wear brands on your shoulders.
We’re inside the bubble so we talk in terms of brands (i.e. openAI) and personalities (sama), which are part of brand really, but outside of the bubble the UX is what gets people talking.
When you think about Slack doing their AI dataset shit, you can really see how much their product is a product of UX, or fashion, that could easily be replaced by a similar collection of existing properties.
As I write this, I already wonder if UX is just another facet of brand or if it’s a seperate entity.
Anyway, I’m writing this out as a “is this a thing?” question. WDYR?
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i’m just thinking of how every web page seemed the same for a long while there cos everyone was just using safe defaults
Do you mean that as an example of brand taking a back seat by becoming bland and homogenous?
just that you had to actually look at what the specific thing was.
in such circumstances, the “brand” is really “thing with trendy website”
yes, still very much in that zone too. The web has been design system’d to death. I don’t think you can even find out what the thing is via the site now, I guess that’s a big part of my ranting, that they really don’t want to assert what it is too clearly. Hence the “but it’s so easy to use” being the brand.
lol holy shit that was you?! I saw that ages back and laughed my ass off at it
do you mean the bootstrap era or the bootstrap 2 era or the microsoft-went-square-so-everyone-fell-over-themselves flat trend or the material era or the The Web Is Now Blue And White era or …
(e: and that’s only back to, like, 2012/2013… fucking hell)
or the “we made our own design system that we’ve open-sourced for no reason other than to say we open source”
@fasterandworse I definitely remember this being put forward about 10-15 years ago during the UX boom (basically, “your UX is your brand”). I don’t know if it’s so much of a conscious decision anymore. I suspect not, because as you allude to, UX is more about fashion now.
I agree, I don’t think many of the things I criticise about the UX industry are the result of a conscious decision, but no less insidious. It’s a good point though, I also remember the emergence of UX as a thing when there would be talk about it being everything - as if things like usability, accessibility, customer service, QA, etc never existed before.
