When you spend enough time on the Internet, everything starts to look the same. Images repeat until every ounce of originality melds into the same mush. When aesthetic trends or photo styles dominate the visual landscape, everyone hops on board and mimics the style.
Elizabeth Goodspeed wrote a piece for Eye on Design titled All Advertising Looks the Same These Days. Blame the Moodboard. “This kind of visual homogeneity is a common occurrence in the art direction world, where ubiquitous styles operate less like trends and more like memes; remixed and diluted until they become a single visual mass,” she wrote. ” In today’s extremely-online world, the vast availability of reference imagery has, perhaps counterintuitively, led to narrower thinking and shallower visual ideation. It’s a product of what I like to call the ‘moodboard effect.’”
It seems that moodboarding hasn’t let up since 2022; if anything, it’s been perpetuated, especially as every brand’s Instagram feed has become a visual mood board instead of a pedestal or platform to push products. You know, with the “make Instagram casual again” rhetoric. And as I’ve been studying (and stalking) different brands’ Instagram feeds, I’m noticing a new look and feel that’s being utilized.
