Why Everything’s Starting to Look the Same

The illusion of taste

AI has made creating things faster, easier, and more accessible than ever. It can design you a logo in seconds based off a few prompts, generate powerpoint layouts (and write you the copy if you're really stuck), write a brand story mimicking your tone of voice, and even suggest colour palettes that look perfectly fine. But that’s the problem. Most of it looks ok. Rarely does it feel actually alive.

What AI can’t replicate is human taste. It can mimic aesthetics perfectly, but not the decisions behind them. Taste is instinctive, and even more so in creative. It’s the difference between what looks ok and passable, and what feels 100% right. It’s subtle, often invisible to most, and built from experience rather than data and 0’s and 1’s.

Everything looks like everything else

AI learns from repetition. It pulls from everything that has existed before, which means it will always be a step behind. It’s not all together a bad thing to look at pre-existing creative (it’s worth reading ‘steal like an artist’ for more on this). AI understands trends, but it doesn’t understand timing. It can create what’s fashionable and on-trend, but not what’s next.

That’s why work created purely through AI tools often looks familiar. It’s why you can start to spot AI riddled intricacies – such as em-dashes everywhere (see what we did there). AI references what’s been popular, what’s been optimised, what’s been liked, what’s been talked about on LinkedIn. It doesn’t have a sense of when something has been overdone to death. It doesn’t know when a visual idea has already peaked, or when restraint would say more. It can’t know if it’s created the same logo for a business as someone else from the other side of the globe.

Taste is human. It’s intuitive, reactive, often messy. It comes from having seen enough to recognise what still feels fresh and what’s on its way out. From knowing when to hold back, when to break rules, when something needs to breathe. It’s the decision to leave white space, to crop an image tighter, to strip the colour out entirely because it feels more confident that way. To avoid using a certain typeface or colour, as it’s been used elsewhere and will no doubt get you into legal trouble with another brand.

Brands are built on culture, not code

Good branding has always been cultural. It takes cues from how people behave, what they’re buying, what they’re listening to, what they’re wearing. You can learn a lot about branding from walking down the street, not on ChatGPT. Branding is about emotion as much as execution.

When you walk into an Aesop store, it doesn’t feel like an algorithm chose the layout. The materials, the light, the tone of voice. It’s all so considered you can hardly notice how designed it is. That’s the point. It feels natural, but well done, at the same time not over manufactured.

Palace is the opposite in style, but the same idea. It’s entirely rough around the edges, confident, chaotic in a way that feels alive. Every campaign, photo set, and product drop feels aware of its surroundings, built by people who understand the scene they’re part of. If AI tried to recreate that, it would smooth it out, make it too clean, too polite. The imperfections would be lost. The natural textured vibe would be removed and ironed out.

That’s what happens when creative direction is replaced with automation. The soul of it disappears. The imperfections that make something perfect are completely lost.

Don't get caught speeding

There’s a lot of talk about speed right now. AI saves time, AI can do all the things faster, AI can replce your job. It streamlines workflows. It lets you produce more, faster. It can product realistic imagery and videos. But design isn’t just about output and never has been. (If you’re a designer, when have you ever been asked to create 1,000 photoshop compositions in an afternoon) The best ideas usually come from the space in between the work. Everyone needs the moments of doubt, the conversations, and reflection that shift a project from good to great, and from great to memorable.

When everything becomes instant, you lose the instinct to refine. Why bother, right? It’s in fact the smallest details are often the hardest to justify, but they’re what make something timeless. The decision to move a headline up a few pixels, to change the paper stock, to choose a typeface that’s slightly awkward because it feels more human, to fix some kerning on lettering or to tweak an image for hours. Those are choices made by taste, not by code.

AI can give you a bunch of options, but it can’t tell you which one feels right and which you should go with. It can’t know what your audience will connect with, or what a brand should represent in a particular moment in culture. It’ll just give you a trendy colour scheme and tick the task as complete. That’s where creative direction matters most, it’s the filter that gives meaning to the work.

Good taste isn’t luck

In a world where everything is starting to look templated, taste becomes the key difference. It’s what makes creative feel deliberate, even when it’s simple. It’s what gives personality to design systems and trust to brand identities.

Look at how Acne Studios or Jacquemus present themselves. There’s clarity, but also personality. They understand their own guidelines. Their tone, the rhythm that goes with it, the way they photograph, the restraint in their type. It all feels human, even when it’s minimal. That’s not style as such. That’s taste used as strategy.

Taste is also about knowing when to shift. When to evolve before things become too predictable. Before AI start mimicking your ideas. It’s forward-looking, not nostalgic, not even on-trend. In fact it doesn’t rely on trends, but it understands how they move and shift forward.

Tech as a tool, not as a compass

We’re at a point where most of us use AI and automation every day. It’s part of our daily processes. But it shouldn’t ever be given the reigns to creative design.

Technology can improve efficiency and help explore our ideas faster, but it can’t make the calls that need to be made. It doesn’t understand nuance, tone, or emotion, and likely never will. AI won't even argue with you as it doesn’t even have an opinion, no matter how much you try to gaslight chatGPT. And let’s not forget that great brands need an opinion, and sometimes arguments behind the scenes.

The best results happen when technology supports human direction, and compounds upon creative ideation. The combination of a healthy use of intelligence and, more importantly, taste. Data mixed with actual instinct. Logic paired with feeling and emotion. Ai is very very far from replacing a brand team.

That’s where the future of brand design will live. Not in machines replacing creatives, but in creatives using machines better.

Because human taste still beats tech and always will.