Introduction

Don’t get me wrong, if standing out was easy, distinction wouldn’t be rare among personal brands. Of course, in a perfect world, more individual uniqueness among brands would lead to flourishing innovation. However, in reality, most brands are bland, and truly unique ones are rare. Therefore, learning how to stand out is something you have to figure out for yourself, while blending in is something we learn from others.

Just as the body goes through phases of sickness, designers with personal brands are also highly prone to a phase of blandness. And there are several symptoms that can indicate the brand's body isn’t in its best form. For example, when your brand is confused with others, that’s a symptom. Or when you start feeling dissatisfaction about your work, that’s another one. Until you reach a point of jealousy over other brands’ success, you know that blandness has infested you deeply and requires some brand medication. But before we dissect these symptoms, one by one, let’s define what blandness means.

First, let me tell you a short story. about Seth Godin, the author of “Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable,” and his trip to France. When Godin was young, he went on a road trip with his family and was amazed by the hundreds of “storybook cows.” After about twenty minutes, they stopped noticing them. The beauty of the cows didn’t matter anymore. Regardless of how "perfect" and "attractive" they were, because they all looked the same, they became "common" and "boring". But why? Don’t we all seek after beauty? Isn’t perfectionism the X factor for something to stand out? Shortly, the answer is no. Being perfect and attractive doesn’t make something stand out. On the contrary, we saw that despite the beauty of cows, Godin called them “common” and “boring.” As we all know, both words are siblings to blandness. Therefore, Godin’s story about the French cows is a good example of what blandness means.

Before we go further with examining the symptoms of blandness. Let’s diagnose the dynamics of having a bland brand. When a personal brand creates work that looks like everyone else’s, the designer gets lost in the crowd. The work might be clean, professional, and functional, but it lacks the character needed to stand out and be memorable. And if a brand is not memorable, it gets mixed up with others in the same category. So let’s start by discussing the first symptom, brand confusion.

Brand Confusion

Let’s say that your brand is famous, adored by people and respected by peers. We ask one of your fans to undergo a CAT scan to study their brain activity when they are exposed to your brand. You notice that some unusual activity in their brain occurs just to see your brand’s logo. The customer feels differently stimulated once they see your design and your distinct style behind it. Excitement, awe or even happiness. All these emotions can be triggered once you are at the top of your customer’s mind. That’s the beauty of it. When a brand reaches true distinction, it triggers what neuroscience describes as “cortical relief”, where decision-making becomes intuitive rather than analytical. Let’s flip the scene, imagining that your brand is confused with the rest of the brands of the same category instead. How would potential customers perceive your brand? They won’t because the brand is unknown to them, leaving no emotional association. Consequently, your brand will end up as another commodity fighting with the rest for crumbs. A fight leads to "ever-decreasing profits, decay and eventual bankruptcy." Ultimately, being treated as a mere commodity leads to symptom 2: dissatisfaction with your work.

Dissatisfaction with Your Work

As I mentioned earlier, when your brand is top of mind, you feel special, admired, and appreciated. But when your brand does not stand out, your mood can shift to something more negative. You may feel dissatisfied with your status and how your work is seen by both consumers and other designers. Over time, this feeling can lead to questioning the meaning of your work. As Godin says, “not standing out is the same as being invisible.” When your personal brand becomes invisible, you lose sight of why you are in this field and your mission for success. Being left to compare with other brands that succeeded leads to the next symptom: envy.

Envy

As a designer, living in envy means surrendering self-autonomy and creativity to comparison with others’ achievements. When envy hits, a designer loses touch with their values and vision. The saying “know thyself” loses its meaning when you forget the foundation of your brand. When you stop trusting your own strengths and start envying other brands, your brand has reached a critical point where it risks fading away. You start looking at your competitors' successful ideas, trying to figure out what makes them distinctive. This is the last phase before realisation that you have lost touch with the brand, turning it into mediocrity, a commodity valued by its price and the absence of better options, rather than its indispensable importance.

You might think these symptoms are exaggerated and that designers with personal brands rarely face them. But in reality, designers experience these issues every day. Eventually, this can lead them to shut down their businesses. Or, even worse, abandon their vision and values, slowly fading from the scene, decaying to non-existence.

Conclusion

Brands don’t collapse because they fail. They collapse because they slowly become forgettable. Designers cannot ignore the signs when their brand becomes bland. The long-term survival of any brand depends on one golden rule: stay different, know who you are, and always check your visibility. But be aware that when mediocrity takes over, a brand loses what makes it special and starts following someone else’s path. Now that we know the symptoms of blandness, we can talk about its consequences for your brand. This will be discussed in the next article.