What dopamine design leaves behind
There’s a thing I was informally calling the hyperbright noise palette. I recently spotted someone else calling it “dopamine design”, and while I like my name for the trend, that term does a vastly superior job of explaining what I mean by it.
I’ve seen it, you’ve seen it. Everyone has seen it.
And a recent IG post from @behindthe_brief did a really good job of explaining it, so I don’t think I need to go into it more.
But it’s acid-dropping lemonade, lavender SAAS apps and what amounts to a whole language trying to short-circuit thoughtful consumerism through visual overstimulation.
It’s also a bit of a hack. The way it is when you buy into any category language and adopt it whole-cloth. We’re picking up the guidebook phrases that will allow us to sound French carrying out a transaction (“je voudrais, s’il vous plaît”) but we can’t carry the conversation further.
We could say the usual things about how the pendulum swings when everyone rushes to adopt the fresh-off-the-feeds design conventions, and what was at first (ever-so-briefly, these days) differentiated became the new black. Or the new blah. Depending on how strongly you feel about it.
Which is why the work of differentiation is not just different for difference’s sake. It’s challenging and personal. And rooted in values and beliefs that, while possibly not individually unique on their own, when woven into your offer and services, make up a DNA that nobody can replicate by merely adopting the same visual tactics. It doesn’t translate outside your world. At least not as well, as powerfully, as resonant.
Accepted wisdom, and honestly great advice, suggests the response to category conventions is for brands to zig when everyone else zags. If there’s no strategy behind your zig, though, it’s a canon shot right into a reactive cycle of endless zigging trying to keep ahead of market moves beyond your control.
Not only endless, too. It can be exhausting — and expensive.
What ultimately makes something — and a brand, specifically — memorable, is how it connects to meaning. Loudness shouts, but shouts are often empty noise. And meaning a brand can share or co-create with its customer is most memorable of all.
Shared meaning doesn’t just happen most of the time. It’s quite rare to accidentally say the thing that plants a flag in consumers’ minds over a three-second shelf scan.
I wrote a short, five-email series on brand story — and why it’s not your about page.