‘Blanding’ is still going strong

Last month, PayPal released a brand refresh, discarding the long-running blue logo in its wordmark and simplifying its look—and it didn’t take long until the jokes started rolling in on social. The Verge summed up the new logo as “flat, black, and generic,” and “just like everything else,” while one X user was a bit more blunt in their critique: “graphic design is illegal now i think.”

Discussions around brands’ move to minimalism in logos aren’t new—at least not in the last 15 years. The trend, sometimes referred to as “blanding,” is often characterized by sans-serif typefaces, muted colors, and flat, simple graphics, and it’s been embraced across industries. Johnson & Johnson, Facebook, BMW, Pinterest, Spotify, Google, and Saint Laurent are on the laundry list of brands that have flattened and modernized their wordmarks and logos.

While some brands, like Burberry, have walked back their minimalist rebrands and returned to a more heritage look in recent years, the PayPal refresh shows that the trend is still going strong—and, despite criticism from some consumers, branding experts we spoke with say that may be okay.

“​​Just because you’re using a sans-serif font, that doesn’t mean you’re blanding,” Marlee Bruning, creative director at branding agency Design Bridge, told Marketing Brew. “Just because you’re using a limited color palette, that doesn’t mean you're blanding, unless you’re doing it because you didn’t want to think of something else to do.”

Blanding together

One driving factor in the minimalist movement over the last two decades has been an increasing focus on digital and design that looks good in a UX setting, especially on phones. “It’s all functionally driven, which is such a boring reason, but it’s all done in service of activating your brand across more platforms and reaching more people,” Bruning said.

An influx of newer and DTC brands embracing more simplistic design, like Everlane and The Ordinary, have also helped popularize the look, Evan Gettinger, principal at brand agency CBX, said.

“I think that in some ways, some of the legacy brands might be responding to this,” he said.

Mattias Mackler, creative director at agency FutureBrand, described the PayPal refresh as sleek and trend-relevant, but acknowledged that there’s a distinct lack of differentiation among many brand logos.

“In today’s market, in order to feel more modern and global, there’s almost a pressure to sacrifice the visual personality or visual quirkiness that comes along with these different individual brands to [achieve] something more universal,” he said. “It’s this double-edged sword where I think they’re doing what they need to do because that’s what the market wants you to look like and be like.”

But for brands, not all personality needs to come from the logo, Mackler said. What matters more, he said, is the overall brand toolkit and how it interacts visually and verbally with customers, whether that’s on a website or in a print ad.

“Twenty, 30, 40 years ago, the logo was 80% of the brand,” he said. “I think in today’s world, the logo, as important as it is, really is just the signifier.”

A(bland)on ship?

Still, there can be risks to going all-in on a minimalist logo, and Bruning advised brands to consider what the look says about its identity and offerings.

Gap and Tropicana famously attempted minimalist rebrands nearly 15 years ago and received enough negative feedback that they abandoned the rebrands completely. (This year, Tropicana unveiled a new logo that continues to build on its legacy look.)

Bruning said Tropicana’s struggles with its now-trashed modern logo boiled down to consumers wanting a “cozy, authentic” personality from an orange-juice brand and CPGs working to stand out among hundreds of options on a store shelf. That’s not necessarily the case for a financial services company like PayPal, which has fewer competitors and may be focused more on conveying clarity and infrastructure, she said.

“PayPal is about transaction, simplicity, and ease. That’s it,” she said.

With that said, some financial services brands are embracing bolder design. Cash App, for example, is challenging that standard with bright, “almost fantastical AI-esque illustrations,” Bruning noted, and the highly rendered illustrations on the brand’s website could indicate that the days of simplifying graphics and logos for UX purposes could very well be on their way out, she said.

While no one expects minimalist logos to disappear completely, it’s possible that they could take a backseat as some brands, like Burberry, re-embrace serif typefaces and emerging brands like Liquid Death—which uses a bold, gothic wordmark—surge in popularity.

“Everything comes and goes in cycles, and at some point, we’re going to reach a tipping point where things are going to change and expressiveness is going to come back into logos,” Mackler said. “I think that’s inevitable.”