{"id":1118,"date":"2009-02-25T18:51:23","date_gmt":"2009-02-25T23:51:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/mojo\/?p=1118"},"modified":"2025-07-14T14:01:00","modified_gmt":"2025-07-14T19:01:00","slug":"the-dangers-of-homogeneity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/blog\/the-dangers-of-homogeneity\/","title":{"rendered":"The dangers of homogeneity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Quick linguistic review. From the Greek, homo- = same.<\/p>\n

\"\"On Twitter the other day, I clicked on a URL that normally wouldn\u2019t interest me, but for some reason caught my eye. It was about the new Kraft corporate logo:<\/p>\n

Read the whole article<\/a>, because it\u2019s instructive, and I\u2019ve been thinking about that off and on ever since. I don\u2019t know why. Then I saw Sunday\u2019s Wal-Mart insert and saw its new(ish) logo:<\/p>\n

\"\"Do you see a difference?<\/p>\n

Most of you will, I\u2019m sure, since they\u2019re back to back, but I, in all my ADDness, will glance and not see anything of import to differentiate the two. Thus, I will gloss over both. I\u2019ve seen many other, similar logos, but I couldn\u2019t tell you what companies they belonged to. I guess that\u2019s my point.<\/p>\n

I follow several different blogs that talk about social networking, branding, marketing, etc. because I know zero, zilch, nada about all this bullshit and I\u2019d really rather not learn. However, it seems to me, in all my na\u00efvet\u00e9, that you would want your brand\/logo to stand out, no?<\/p>\n

All the writerly\/agently\/editorially blogs talk about branding one\u2019s writing. Do we have logos or don\u2019t we? How does one \u201cbrand\u201d something that is, inherently, about \u2026 you? You have one product, or two, maybe sixteen, but really the product is you. If you have a following, your following buys you. If people don\u2019t like your product, people don\u2019t buy you. You are identifiable by your name.<\/p>\n

But then there\u2019s something like this:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Okay, I\u2019m as much a sucker for matching anything and thematic continuity as the next fashion-obsessed girl, and don\u2019t mistake me\u2014these are gorgeous<\/strong><\/em> covers and put \u2019em together like this, they look plenty different. But put me in a bookstore without a list and I won\u2019t remember which one I have and which one I don\u2019t. What\u2019s scary is that I could chalk that up to my gnat-like attention span or my ADD, except I\u2019m not the only one with the complaint. By far.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just corporate brands or book covers. It\u2019s cars, too.<\/p>\n

\"\"When I was in high school, a girl in my class had a \u201972 Torino. A guy had a \u201969 Nova. Another had a KITT car. I drove a \u201972 or \u201973 Beetle (one of those freaks of nature with the auto<\/a>-clutch<\/strike>stick<\/a>). Occasionally. I used to be able to tell what car was what, and possibly the year.<\/p>\n

But now?<\/p>\n

\"\"They all look alike. It was annoying when I didn\u2019t have a vested interest in cars, but I went looking for a luxury car for Bishop Steel Baron (Magdalene<\/em><\/a>, book 3) and I found \u2026 nothing that would differentiate a luxury car from a cheap Saturn, it was downright maddening. Are you kidding me? All this time I\u2019ve been attributing that to the laws of aerodynamics and that\u2019s probably the most likely explanation for it, but across the brand\/corporate spectrum, from Saturn to Volvo, from economy to luxury, from SUV to SUV, the vast majority look alike.<\/p>\n

I put him in a Bugatti, in case you\u2019re wondering.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t get me started on tract housing, and that includes McMansions.<\/p>\n

I know it\u2019s human nature to be drawn to the familiar, but humans also like variety. I\u2019m feeling a bit of brand oppression. The smoothing out of fonts, the smiley faces and flowers, the streamlining, the \u2026 aerodynamics.<\/p>\n

Am I missing something? I thought branding was about differentiation. If people can\u2019t tell you from someone else, how do they know to throw their money at you?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Quick linguistic review. From the Greek, homo- = same. On Twitter the other day, I clicked on a URL that normally wouldn\u2019t interest me, but for some reason caught my eye. It was about the new Kraft corporate logo: Read the whole article, because it\u2019s instructive, and I\u2019ve been thinking about that off and on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-money"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1118"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1118"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14049,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1118\/revisions\/14049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}