Death to the moodboard: Why does all branding and marketing look the same?

Taste has become a feedback loop — you search a keyword, save what everyone else saved, publish it under the same keyword, and feed the next person the same references. The pool converges.

Mood boards narrow your thinking before an idea has formed — start a project by collecting visual references and you're copying, not creating. They do the thinking for you.

"Good taste" is mostly majority taste — it's a tribe-and-safety response, which is why genuinely unique things can feel wrong at first (see: Crocs, or a disappointing trip round Liberty London).

Conform only where the audience needs it — a legal client wants safe and credible, not psychedelic. But in cautious sectors, tiny differences stand out easily precisely because everyone else is playing it safe.

Don't ask clients what competitor branding they like — ask what ideas seem to be working — "I like blue" is meaningless when every health tech logo is a blue DNA helix.

Uniqueness comes from combination — take what you know and pair it with something uncommon or adjacent. The London Underground map came from applying an electrician's circuitry logic to a map.

Break the habit three ways — start with strategy and an idea (not visuals), look outside your category, and go analog to escape the algorithm's echo chamber.