Running to stay in the same place: The "rat race" of brands.

We are capable of producing design faster than ever, yet people's attention hasn't grown by a single minute; quite the opposite, in fact. The reality is that the attention of the people in front of us hasn't grown by a single minute, rather the reverse. Everyone knows this, and yet the usual response is to produce more and more.

I've been thinking about this for a while as two clocks running at different speeds. The fast one measures execution time and is accelerating more and more. The slow one measures how long it takes for a person to know what to expect from a company, and that one hasn't budged: it takes years, and volume alone doesn't speed it up, because memory settles at its own pace.

Competing on volume is running just to stay in the same place. A good visual identity, a consistent and well-executed design job, used to be proof that there was rigour in that company and a concern for how you are perceived. But a well-executed piece of design is a well-placed facade, and it was enough for a while; however, it only worked when the person next to you was worse off than you. The interesting thing about this is that AI strips brands bare.

For years, many companies skipped the decision-making step: deciding who you are, who you are for, and where you are coming from. Well-executed delivery covered it up well enough, but now the seams are showing, and producing greater volume is impact for impact's sake—content that is forgotten as quickly as it is created, and on top of that, it is exhausting.

What leaves a lasting impression is a brand that creates a universe with its own climate, and a climate is built by knowing who you are speaking to, deciding what needs to be repeated, and sustaining it long enough to make people want to inhabit it.

What needs to change is the question a project starts with. The point isn't how we make something good; it's how we manage to create something of our own.

It should always have been that question.