Member-only story

Maybe we don’t have to (re)brand everything

and end up being clones of each other.

Faux Icing
UX Collective
10 min readDec 10, 2021

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An illustration of a faux online design mockup marketplace.
The prevalence of “corporate” (self) branding has created a market of digital mockups. Designers are now quickly envisioning brand guidelines by superimposing corporate design materials onto premade product shots. // No Medium membership? Read this article for free here.

In continuing this series of Creative Monologue, I’ll be talking about how we designers and businesses brand or rebrand ourselves, and the related pitfalls we should avoid.

“It is as if graphic designers all work from the same palette… they pick and choose from what is currently hip and readily acceptable to infuse the work of their clients with a dose of contemporary cool.”

— Rudy VanderLans for Emigre № 64 (2003)

WHEN I FIRST STARTED doing freelance design, my thoughts were very much pigeon-holed into achieving results like those in Behance have showcased. Professional, eye-catching, systematic, consistent-to-the-tee sort of branding* was something that was glorified by that website to the core. Even pieces of printed paper need to have that right texture and colour (courtesy of mockup image sites) for an identity of a business to be “solidified.” Nothing was overlooked.

*The term branding used over here mainly refers to the visual outputs that a company/individual would publish. This ranges from their logos to social media posts, to business

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Published in UX Collective

We believe designers are thinkers as much as they are makers. Curated stories on UX, Visual & Product Design. https://linktr.ee/uxc

Written by Faux Icing

Freelance Graphic Designer, overthinker, and desires humour. fauxicing.carrd.co

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