Why does everything on the internet look the same now?

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Why does everything on the internet look the same now?

From typefaces, websites and logos to buildings, cars and home decor, a handful of internet and design industry trends are making everything look more similar.

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Why does everything on the internet look the same now?​

Typefaces, websites, logos, web illustrations and product designs are getting less distinctive. Blame "design thinking" and too much inspiration.​

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Caitlin Dewey·

Links I Would Gchat You If We Were Friends

Updated May 9, 2024

Have you seen that ubiquitous Instagram reel of the woman pretending to be different fonts? You are the target audience if you, like me, took a single introductory design class in college. In the clip, creator Elle Cordova plays a series of typefaces, adopting a different costume and persona for each one: a bespectacled snob for Garamond, a coked-up newspaperman for Courier, a purple-haired hippie for Comic Sans, etc.

People love this video. The original installment has 1.8 million likes. Since January, Cordova has also filmed two follow-ups — the most recent sponsored by Monotype Fonts, a massive, quasi-monopolistic global library. Monotype has amassed a collection of tens of thousands of typefaces, including biggies like Times New Roman, Arial and Calibri, which many applications proffer by default. The company’s primacy is controversial: Some designers accuse it of stifling original, independent and experimental work.

For that reason, Monotype’s appearance in Cordova’s typeface skits struck me as ironic, if a win for all involved. It makes sense that the reigning autarch of web fonts would want to sponsor what amounts to a (enormously clever!) three-part advertorial. But Cordova’s skits work, in large part, because they celebrate the personality and variety of typefaces we encounter online. And by many measures, those typefaces are actually getting more similar and less interesting, thanks to factors including Monotype’s near-monopoly, Instagram’s algorithms and other consolidating forces in web design.

This subject has been on my mind for a while — roughly a year, in fact (!). On May 17, 2023, TikTok adopted a new and much-heralded typeface called TikTok Sans, which … looks eerily similar to Proxima Nova, the one that preceded it.

Proxima Nova is purportedly the most-used commercial typeface on the web, and — at the time — I was interested in the idea that its waning popularity might say something about The Culture.™

But as I floated this theory to designers, including the guy who first created Proxima Nova in 1994, I realized that internet brands weren’t exactly diversifying away from Proxima’s aesthetic. Instead, companies including TikTok, Google, Netflix and Airbnb have trumpeted “new,” bespoke typefaces that are essentially Proxima Nova, with a few token changes. Even Cordova, of “fonts hanging out” fame, might struggle to invent distinct personalities for lookalikes like Airbnb’s Cereal and Google’s Product Sans.

This phenomenon — which one writer dubbed (*Garamond voice*) “ aesthetic consolidation” — isn’t limited to typefaces or fonts. Many designers and critics have griped that a wave of overwhelming sameness has also overtaken mainstream web design and visual culture writ large.

In 2020, a fascinating study by researchers at Indiana University analyzed the color, layout and style of 10,000 websites and concluded that they’d become markedly more similar since 2010. Logos, web illustrations and product designs also increasingly look the same, as do buildings, cars, home interiors and residential paint choices. Last year, the brand strategist Alex Murrell rounded many of these examples up in a visual essay called “ The Age of Average,” which I think about … almost every day.

“From film to fashion and architecture to advertising, creative fields have become dominated and defined by convention and cliché,” Murrell wrote. “Distinctiveness has died. In every field we look at, we find that everything looks the same.”

Why is this happening, though, and what does the internet have to do with it? There are, frankly, as many theories as there are typefaces in Monotype’s collection. Some have posited that it relates to the rise of software and typeface libraries, including Monotype, or other standardized visual reference points, like Instagram and HGTV. Others — most notably the writer and critic Kyle Chayka — have argued that social media algorithms promote a standardized, smooth-edged visual culture, most readily seen in places like coffee shops and Airbnbs.

I am personally not qualified to speculate. (I got a B+ in that one design class.) But I recently called up Jarrett Fuller, a designer and writer who teaches at North Carolina State University and hosts the Scratching the Surface podcast. Fuller also writes a blog and is the author of the books What It Means To Be A Designer Today and Where Must Design Go Next?

This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity. Please enjoy it!

Hey, thanks so much for taking the time to do this — especially since I realize my initial email was a bit all over the place! I don’t typically write about design, but I went down this really fascinating rabbit hole after TikTok changed its typeface last May.​

We should probably start with the very basics, given my background or lack thereof. Do typefaces generally have a lifecycle? And if so, how long does that lifecycle last?​

Yeah, visual culture trends generally have a lifecycle, and typography and fonts and typefaces are all part of that. But it’s getting more difficult to say how long that lifecycle lasts. Visual trends are evolving faster than ever before. Social media makes trends spread faster but also makes them fall out of favor faster. Helvetica had a good decade, maybe two. I don’t think any font will get a decade of dominance anymore. Instead, something crops up in a couple of places, and then suddenly it’s everywhere and everyone is doing it. Then everyone is moving onto something new. Each successive ‘trend’ continues to evolve and blur into the others. There are less definitive ‘styles’ than before because everything is building upon what came before, blurring them all together.

 

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Is there a typeface or genre of typeface that’s particularly “trendy” right now?​

If we’re talking about interface design or digital design, I think we’re in a moment that’s really hard to describe, because it’s sort of just like air — it’s everywhere and it’s no longer noticeable.

It’s those very clean, bold san serif fonts. It’s the rounded rectangle buttons, just off the primary colors — think of Instagram blue, which is not a perfect blue, but blue with a little bit of green in it. It’s the subtle gradient background, the very minimal use of texture and shadow. In a way, we’ve been in this since like 2013 or 2014, when Apple got rid of the fake leather-binding [in its Calendar design] and went all in on this flat, gradient look.

There’s been a lot of cultural criticism in the last couple of years to the effect that the ‘90s were “the last” decade, and I think it’s really interesting to apply that logic to graphic design and visual culture. In a lot of ways, every decade prior to the 1990s had a distinct graphic design style, more or less — you could look at a piece of graphic design and say “oh, that’s from the ‘60s, that’s from the ‘70s.” But you really can’t do that anymore. Maybe a little bit around Y2K or the early 2000s, but everything else has blurred together. It’s a repetition of everything that has happened before. It’s not limited to graphic design — if you’re talking about visual culture writ large, it’s increasingly difficult to define specific trends.

Why is that? Is that just a function of designers having more access to visual references?​

I think that’s right. With the visual stimulation of Instagram, of Pinterest, of Behance, of design and style blogs and roundup sites, you have access to so much visual design from around the world. Then with the metrics of social media — likes, views, comments — it becomes really easy to see what is popular, what is resonating with people, what is not. When you have access to everything, it becomes difficult to break that cycle and do something new. I think that’s part of it.

The rise of the internet also paralleled the rise of design thinking, which was a movement to systematize design processes and apply them to networks and organizations. That systemization is a rigid process. When everyone is following the same set of steps to design something, you end up with the same set of outcomes, as well.

Design thinking emphasizes that we’re not just decorators, we’re not just people who come in at the end and make your app look nice, we’re problem-solvers. We’re critical to the thing you’re making and selling. But if designers think of themselves as “problem solvers,” then they’re probably thinking about the most straightforward way to get users or whatever — they’re not thinking about ways to put new things into the culture. When you have metrics you need to hit, or when there’s VC funding behind a project, I think there’s probably some caution there. You have to do what works. You end up borrowing conventions from apps that already exist and already have millions of users.

This is probably a good point to circle back to the new TikTok font, which looks … a lot like the old one? Is that a fair characterization, or am I missing something important?​

No, in a weird way, I think it’s not that different from Proxima Nova. It’s a fairly standard sort of humanistic sans serif. They’re not reinventing the wheel here. There’s some subtle details to update it, but there’s nothing revolutionary, nothing where I’m like, “I’m so glad you changed from Proxima Nova to this.”

The bigger trend I’m seeing is a lot of companies are designing custom typefaces for their apps, but they’re all so similar. Yes, a type designer would be able to point out all the subtle differences, but an average person would never notice. Apple did this, Google has a font. I want to say Instagram and Facebook both have custom fonts. TikTok has this. None of them are departing from the Helvetica/Proxima Nova vibe, but they all have subtle things they can use as differentiators.

What’s the purpose of a company creating its own typeface, if that typeface is not actually very distinctive?​

I wonder if it’s just a form of branding — to appear you are doing something new, even though it’s not radically different.

As you point out, this is also a lot bigger than typefaces — there are many areas of visual culture that appear to be slipping into some kind of “sameness.” Can you tell me where that phenomenon is most visible?​

The example I always give to my students is digital design. Across websites and apps, we’ve settled into a convention of what is good and what works that we almost don’t question it anymore. Almost every app on your phone has bright colors and a simple sans-serif font. The interface is a series of rounded rectangles with simple line-art icons. Same for the web. Think of any editorial platform: You’ve got the big hero image that fills the screen, a line of navigation at the top with a logo in the left corner, and a simple, single column of text down the middle. Maybe some images break the grid, maybe there’s some experimentation with type choices, but almost every article you read online is structured in the same way.

To a lesser extent, branding has become weirdly similar too. At a time, branding was a way to signal difference, to stand out. But now the aesthetic of Silicon Valley has made every logo look similar: Again, it’s a sans-serif typeface with a simple icon.

How much do you think social media algorithms are to blame for this? As you’re probably very aware, there’s been lots of debate to that effect since the release of​

I think social media has reshaped branding more than anything else over the last decade. If you’re starting a new brand or if you’re an established brand trying to reach a new audience, social media is the first place you would turn. So much of our interactions with brands happen through social media and each of these platforms has conventions that seem to work well for engagement, likes, comments, etc.

Because of this, brands are looking (and sounding!) more alike to get that engagement. And to push this even further, all of us on social media are brands now too — brands sound more like humans and humans sound more like brands.

This is all mildly depressing to me, so I’d like to end on a slightly more inspirational note. Can you tell me where you go online to see examples of truly novel, cutting-edge web or interface design? Is there an Instagram feed, a website, a publication, a specific person …? If readers want to see cool stuff, where should they look?​

I’m continually surprised by the things that surface on Are.na, a quasi-bookmarking site/social platform. There are no algorithms and it feels like the old internet in the best way. I see a lot over there I don’t see anywhere else.