> What value are you gaining by having 20 companies pay 20 designers to make the same generic uninspired designs because the clients want it to "look like $every_other_tech_company.?"
You're employing people, which has some value to an ostensibly equitable society (lord knows most jobs are very similar and could be streamlined, consolidated, etc.), but yeah, I'm in agreement that it's a pretty crap situation beyond that.
Which is part of my problem with stuff like this—it encourages and embraces that homogenization. Set aside compensation, value, etc., and I'm just sick of seeing the same shit on every website and want to dissuade people from making more of what we already have in excess.
Yeah, it's one of those things where it's not a big deal if the audience sees it for what it is, because in that case, the company is getting out of it what they put into it.
What sucks is when people are so conditioned to expect a particular aesthetic or asset class (as with corporate memphis) that they just ignore it anyway, effectively justifying going the cheap route. "If our customers don't care about our illustrations anyway, why would we pay for custom ones?" If your illustrations don't matter, why are you using any in the first place?
> "really bad stock photo"
Ironically, really bad stock photos usually come with a licensing fee.
> What value are you gaining by having 20 companies pay 20 designers to make the same generic uninspired designs because the clients want it to "look like $every_other_tech_company.?"
You're employing people, which has some value to an ostensibly equitable society (lord knows most jobs are very similar and could be streamlined, consolidated, etc.), but yeah, I'm in agreement that it's a pretty crap situation beyond that.
Which is part of my problem with stuff like this—it encourages and embraces that homogenization. Set aside compensation, value, etc., and I'm just sick of seeing the same shit on every website and want to dissuade people from making more of what we already have in excess.