Homogenous Graphic Design: Good or Bad?
Here’s the graphic designer’s conundrum – be good enough so that peer’s accept you and your work looks contemporary versus being different enough that your work attracts attention. Combine that with pressure from a rich history of graphic design forebears and it becomes very difficult to stamp your mark. Professional graphic design, without a doubt, involves satisfying both camps to some degree.
By daring to be different I mean the difference that was evident in the work of Picasso from the work of the peers around him. It would have been difficult to not notice Picasso’s work in a group exhibition. He dared to see a path of his own among that outward concensus of opinion about what constituted a painting. The challenge is twofold: how to be original, and how to be brave enough to dare to be original.
The third super-imposed challenge comes from the interactivity of the Web as a medium. How to be the same enough that people intuitively understand the interface but different enough that they find it exactly as challenging as it needs to be to achieve its outcomes.
The homogenisation of culture is an interesting thing, too; its about the growing sameness of tastes and a consensus about what people want. In a way society is screaming out for homogeneity in design so it can either assimilate it as information or disregard it is as a marketing message in the surrounding noise of life. So, to some extent, homogeneity is not only expected but its better. On the other hand its the kiss of death for any designer wanting to make a mark for themselves.
