The case for weirder brands
The “Make Branding Weird” Manifesto Is Overdue
Bentzion Goldman, Design Director at Mother Design, dropped a provocation that’s been bouncing around the design world: identity design has become safe, sanitized, and boring. His word for last year’s biggest rebrands? “Overwhelmingly okay.”
He’s right. And the problem runs deeper than aesthetics.
When every B2B company picks the same geometric sans-serif, the same muted blue-to-purple gradient, and the same abstract blob illustrations, nobody stands out. The entire category starts to look like one company. Which means your $80K rebrand just made you invisible.
Goldman’s prescription is to “make branding weird,” but not in the random or chaotic sense. It’s about having enough conviction in your positioning to let it show up visually. Unexpected typography. Anti-trend color choices. Forms that feel organic instead of optimized-by-committee. Mother Design’s work for Fhirst (a prebiotic soda brand) is a good proof point: reverse-contrast scripts, animal mascots, Papyrus as a supporting typeface. Sounds like a disaster on paper. Works beautifully in practice, because the choices are deliberate, not decorative.
So what does this mean for you? If your brand looks like it could belong to any of your competitors, you have a positioning problem dressed up as a design problem. The fix isn’t a trendier visual system. It’s having something specific enough to say that your brand can afford to look different saying it.
Lufthansa Group Just Showed Everyone How Brand Architecture Works
Lufthansa Group launched a new group-level brand identity. New logo, expanded color palette, custom typeface. But the strategic move underneath is more interesting than the visuals.
The crane logo now appears without its surrounding circle. Six new colors represent different altitudes, from ground to sky. The “Member of Lufthansa Group” endorsement is rolling out across digital boarding passes, websites, lounges, and 160+ aircraft. Here’s the real story though: Lufthansa is shifting from “a group of airlines” to “an integrated airline group.” That’s not a tagline change. That’s a structural repositioning of how their portfolio brands relate to each other.
Each airline (SWISS, Austrian, Brussels, ITA) keeps its own identity. But the connective tissue between them is now visible, consistent, and strategic. Services get bundled under the group brand. The parent brand earns equity it never had before.
So what does this mean for you? If you’re running a multi-product company or building toward one, your brand architecture matters more than your logo. The question isn’t “does each product look good?” It’s “does the relationship between them make the whole thing more valuable?” Lufthansa is betting that a visible group brand makes every sub-brand stronger. That’s a bet most B2B companies with 2+ products should be evaluating.
GoFundMe’s Quiet Rebrand Shows How Systems Beat Moments
GoFundMe’s identity refresh, designed by Koto, didn’t make a lot of noise. And that might be the point. The core idea: “Help Adds Up.” The central design element: the Progress Circle, evolved from GoFundMe’s signature fundraising progress bar into a modular visual system.
What makes this interesting isn’t the concept (which is solid, if not groundbreaking). It’s the execution discipline. The Progress Circle works as a logo reveal, a content frame, a motion element, and a data visualization. It scales up for campaigns and scales down for app icons. The green stays central, but the palette expands. The logo itself? Barely changed. A subtle refinement that signals evolution, not revolution.
This is what a mature brand refresh looks like. Not a wholesale tear-down. Not a flashy launch moment. A system that makes every future touchpoint easier to build, more consistent, and more recognizable.
So what does this mean for you? Most early-stage rebrands obsess over the logo and the launch day. The brands that compound over time obsess over the system. Your identity should make every new surface (landing page, pitch deck, product UI, conference booth) faster to produce and harder to get wrong. If your “brand” lives in a PDF that nobody opens, you don’t have a system. You have a souvenir.
Custom Ink’s Repositioning Bet: From T-Shirts to Enterprise
Custom Ink just did its first major brand refresh in 15 years, trading its t-shirt-company positioning for something bigger: “Ink Is More Than You Think.” The catalog now has 10,000+ products, including Nike, Patagonia, and YETI. The customer base has shifted from small groups to Fortune 500s.
This is a classic inflection-point rebrand. The company has outgrown its original identity and needs the market to update its mental model. The risk? When you try to be everything to everyone, you end up meaning nothing to anyone.
Custom Ink’s approach leans into character and humor (their new campaign features a character named Janine who brings the positioning to life through relatable storytelling) rather than trying to out-corporate the enterprise competition. That’s a smart bet. The branded merchandise space is drowning in generic B2B messaging. A company that can be both credible and human has room to win.
So what does this mean for you? If your company has evolved past what your brand communicates, that gap is costing you revenue. Prospects are filtering you out before the first conversation because your surfaces tell the wrong story. The fix isn’t just visual, it’s strategic. What business are you actually in now? And does every surface say that clearly?
If your brand is telling last year’s story while your company is running this year’s playbook, that’s the gap worth closing. Book a call and let’s figure out what your surfaces should actually be saying.