For the last few years, branding has been… polite.
Too polite.
Clean grids. Safe sans-serifs. Muted palettes. Logos that look good in pitch decks but disappear the moment they hit the real world. Somewhere along the way, identity design became obsessed with being inoffensive—and in doing so, forgot how to be interesting.
As we step into 2026, a quiet consensus is forming across the design world: branding needs to get weird again.
Not chaotic. Not random.
But intentionally strange.
Scroll through any brand feed and you’ll see it—everything feels familiar. Comfortably familiar. Dangerously familiar.
That’s why brands like Balenciaga stand out. Their visuals often feel awkward, unsettling, even wrong. And that discomfort is the point. In a landscape of tasteful sameness, weirdness becomes visibility.
Weird isn’t rebellion.
It’s differentiation.
AJAY SINGH RAWAT
April 26, 2026
In design, clarity isn’t about simplicity for its own sake. It’s about removing what doesn’t serve meaning — until what remains feels inevitable.
