Operational notes
- The 'Corporate Memphis' art style has become invisible background noise.
- Being 'weird' or 'ugly' makes you memorable in a sea of sameness.
- Differentiation helps brand recall, even if the design isn't traditionally 'pretty'.
- Anti-design is a reaction to the over-sanitization of the web.
You know the look. The friendly sans-serif font. The vast white space. The “Big Tech Blue” primary color. The flat illustrations of purple people floating around a giant smartphone.
This is the Uncanny Valley of SaaS Design. It looks professional. It looks safe. And it is completely forgettable.
The Problem with Best Practices
When everyone follows the same “Best Practices,” everyone converges on the exact same design. This is called Homogenization. In an attempt to not look “bad,” brands settle for looking “generic.”
But in marketing, being forgotten is worse than being disliked.
The “Ugly” Differentiator
Brands like Dr. Squatch, Liquid Death, or MSCHF succeed because they reject this polish. Their sites are loud, chaotic, sometimes even intentionally garish. They use:
- Weird fonts.
- Over-saturated colors.
- In-your-face animations.
This “ugliness” (or distinctiveness) creates a Moat. If you look like everyone else, you are a commodity. If you look weird, you are a Brand.
Breaking the Template
You don’t have to be Liquid Death. But you should audit your site for “Generic Bloat.”
- Are you using stock illustrations that look like every other tech startup?
- Is your copy safe, corporate speak?
- Could you swap your logo with a competitor’s and nobody would notice?
Sometimes, adding a bit of “grit”—texture, noise, bold typography, unusual layouts—can snap the user out of their trance. Ideally, you want them to stop and say, “Whoa, what is this?” Even if they think, “This is weird,” you have their attention. And attention is the precursor to conversion.
