Why Do Brands Look More Alike After Minimal Rebranding?
For a while, whenever I looked at brand rebranding cases, I kept seeing the same scene repeat itself.
Older symbols and decorative elements were stripped away, then reorganized into simpler wordmarks.
This trend appeared especially strongly in fashion and luxury brands. In 2018, Burberry worked with Peter Saville to move from its traditional logo built around the equestrian knight symbol and serif typography toward a simple sans-serif wordmark and the TB monogram. In 2012, Saint Laurent, under Hedi Slimane, dropped "Yves Saint Laurent" in favor of "Saint Laurent Paris" and shifted to a minimalist Helvetica-style treatment. Celine also introduced a simplified wordmark in 2018 by removing the accent and tightening the spacing. Balenciaga, too, adopted a shorter, bolder, more condensed wordmark in 2017.
Looking only at that pattern leads to one question.
If brands are becoming more refined, why do they also start to look more alike at the same time?
To me, the reason feels clear.
Wordmark-led rebranding is efficient for digital environments and global expansion, but that same efficiency can push every brand in the same direction. Burberry's 2018 wordmark, for example, was read at the time as "modern" and "digitally friendly," but a few years later, under Daniel Lee in 2023, Burberry brought back an archive-inspired serif wordmark and restored the Equestrian Knight Design originally introduced in 1901. Burberry's own materials described the 2023 logo as "archive inspired," and industry coverage also read it as a turn away from the blocky sans serif of 2018 toward a more heritage-driven direction.
The logo may be cleaner, but the brand's impression can become blurrier
Wordmark rebranding clearly has advantages.
It remains legible at small sizes, and it is easier to apply consistently across mobile screens, app icons, packaging, social media, and global store signage. When Calvin Klein introduced its new logo in 2017, it also chose a more ordered all-caps wordmark in the name of returning to the "original spirit," and Design Week saw it as a move well suited to digital environments.
The problem starts here.
Once you optimize for readability, scalability, and digital suitability, many brands arrive at similar conclusions.
All caps, simple spacing, little decoration, either sans serif or a restrained serif.
Brands with completely different histories and narratives begin to speak in visually similar voices. Saint Laurent's shift to a minimalist sans serif and Celine's removal of the accent had different internal contexts, but from the outside both left the impression of becoming cleaner, more international, and more expressionless.
This is where I became more convinced of something.
A brand is not completed by the logo alone.
More precisely, a logo alone is no longer enough to separate one brand from another.
What separates brands is not visual form first, but the operating sentence
By "operating sentence," I do not mean a one-line slogan.
I mean the sentence through which the brand actually moves in practice.
For example:
- What language do we use to greet customers?
- How descriptive or how suggestive are our product explanations?
- What tone do we maintain across reservations, service, packaging, guidance, announcements, apologies, and follow-up contact?
- What are the repeated sentences that shape internal decision-making?
- What sentence should a staff member or operator carry in order to act "like this brand"?
This matters because as wordmarks become more alike, consumers feel the differences more strongly in how the brand actually speaks and behaves.
A logo is closer to a sign on the door.
But a brand is decided by the air you feel after opening that door.
Experience tone is no longer the last differentiator of a brand. It is now the first
There was a time when a symbol or logo alone could strongly distinguish one brand from another.
That power still exists, of course. But as major luxury brands have converged toward simple wordmarks over the last several years, differentiation through symbol alone has become harder than before. That is why I think the center of gravity has shifted more heavily toward experience tone. You can also read this change in Burberry's 2023 return to the knight motif and a more heritage-oriented type treatment. It was an attempt to recover visual distinctiveness, but also a signal of realigning the overall mood and posture of the brand toward Britishness and tradition.
Experience tone is not simply a matter of being kind or cold.
It is a matter of the rhythm through which a brand exists.
Some brands speak sparingly.
Some leave suggestion rather than explanation.
Some treat customers like honored guests, while others treat them like discerning peers.
Some create tension before a package is even opened, while others quietly blend into everyday life throughout use.
These differences do not begin in the logo.
They emerge through operations, sentence choice, service density, spatial rhythm, product descriptions, and the way online and offline connect.
In the era of similar wordmarks, brands are remembered more through behavior
I feel this in a way that resembles how I look at digital products.
Apps today are also becoming more similar in their UI components.
Buttons are rounded, typography is clean, and interactions are familiar.
Yet some services still feel unmistakably like themselves, while others are forgotten as soon as you use them.
The difference does not come from the feature name. It comes from consistency in behavior.
The same is true for brands.
As logos become more alike, what matters more is not
"How does it look?"
but
"How is it operated?"
Take a spatial brand, for example.
Its sign may be a restrained serif wordmark, like so many brands today.
But after that, the paths split.
- Is the reservation message dry, elegant, or warm?
- Are menu descriptions performative, sensory, or grounded in everyday language?
- Does staff interaction create distance, guide taste, or willingly open conversation?
- Do the sound, lighting, scent, and seat spacing create tension, or do they allow people to stay?
- Is the way returning customers are remembered obvious, or natural?
Only when these layers accumulate does a brand finally become itself.
In other words, the body of the brand is closer to an operational attitude than to a visual identity.
That is why rebranding should be closer to redesigning operational language than replacing a logo
When I look at rebranding, I ask about the logo only after something else.
What sentence has this brand started to operate through again?
Burberry's 2023 change is interesting not simply because serif returned. In the official materials, the new logo and EKD were foregrounded together to bring British heritage and the symbolism of "Prorsum" back to the front, and the industry read it as a return to heritage and Britishness. In other words, the core of the change was not the font choice itself, but the kind of attitude through which the brand wanted to speak about itself again.
By contrast, some brands can have a beautiful logo and still feel flat very quickly if the operating sentence is weak.
The visuals may look polished, but the service copy feels copied and pasted, the online voice sounds like something any brand could use, and the packaging and spatial experience leave no particular impression.
In those cases, the logo cannot save the brand.
For rebranding to succeed in a real sense, the question itself has to change.
Rather than asking,
"Is the new logo more sophisticated?"
we should first ask,
"With what tone, with what operational attitude, and with what rhythm will this brand now live?"
What I pay attention to when I look at a brand
That is why, when I evaluate a brand, I increasingly look beneath the logo.
First, the operating sentence.
Does the brand have repeated internal sentences that guide judgment?
Are there standards for what to do and what not to do, what counts as brand-like service, and what kinds of expressions should never be used?
Second, experience tone.
Is the emotional temperature consistent across every moment when a customer touches the brand?
Do the website, space, product descriptions, checkout experience, packaging, and post-purchase guidance all feel like one voice?
Third, consistency in behavior.
Does the value the brand speaks about actually align with the way it operates?
Does a brand that talks about restraint still overpackage? Does a brand that talks about craftsmanship still sound too mechanical in service? Does a brand that claims intimacy still speak in cold operational copy?
When these three come together, the brand moves beyond the logo.
From that point on, it remains memorable even without a large symbol, and it becomes hard to replace even with a simple wordmark.
Many recent rebrandings show one fact clearly.
A brand can no longer be sufficiently distinguished by its logo alone.
In cases like Saint Laurent, Celine, Burberry, and Balenciaga, organizing and simplifying around the wordmark was clearly a strategy of the times, and in many ways it still is. But at the same time, it also narrowed the external distance between brands.
That is why what matters more now is not which font a brand uses,
but through which sentence it is operated,
through which tone it is experienced,
and through which attitude it is repeated.
That is why I keep feeling this more strongly.
A brand may begin with a logo, but it is completed through its operating sentence and its experience tone.