"the prevalence of a single, monocultural aesthetic that seemingly almost every startup and tech company and would-be industry disruptor out there has adopted, it’s worth wondering if there’s some other voice—or even a different modulation of this same voice—that could be appropriate."
This, of course, extends far beyond illustration (the topic of the article - the examples provided are striking). I would love to see more variety - especially for styling UI components because I think we can do so much better than Material Design/Metro or Bootstrap.
Don't mind having a go at answering the appropriateness of this vector-based style, from a design/psychological perspective;
It might be inherent to the mathemetical precision of this drawing style. The clean-cut shapes and geometrical shapes imply a strict adherence to rules, purposeful determination and look clean, clear and predicatable.
In short: they make your product look well thought out.
As opposed to a sketchy drawing style. (Sketchy. What's in a name?)
I do not think "they make your product look well thought out."
is why.
I think the need is to read a clean, clear symbol instantly. Apple, Golden Arch, Handicap-Sign. Because of this, a lot of design majors learn this branding style. Readability is super important in mono-culture, so is clean interface.
Furthermore, vectors are used due to their ability to scale to any-size, and the standard tool, Illustrator, just more naturally makes this look than say a St Gaudans Buffalo Nickel design.
It's a typical copycat style that happens in design and art.
Around 2005, I noticed flying bird silhouettes everywhere.
I think the one word that sums it up is ‘safe.’ Few people would be willing to spend millions developing an app, then risk it all letting someone express themself. The NYT lower stakes lets them be better.
I think you're on to something here. An image on the NYT website has a viewership that decays exponentially over a couple of days. And NYT gets to cycle through dozens of articles every day. So, images are designed to hook a user's attention, and even if happens to be annoying, nobody looks at it after a day or two.
On the other hand, an app's interface is something the users look at for a much more extended period.
I think that idea of people in tech that designer is expressing himself when doing app design might be part of answer. We see it as something suspect, waste of time. Technical graphical design is not designer expressing himself. It is more about what target audience likes and is attracted to.
"Step back and you might mistake these as excerpts from a children’s book, except that they depict grown adults doing ostensibly grown-up things. One could argue that they effectively infantilize their intended audience,"
The real reason the author doesn't even touch on. They are viewing it from an artistic angle rather than a marketing angle.
A consistent style of illustrations is part of the guidelines for most online brands. All the illustrations need to share a common language across the whole product.
* Atlassian has a style-guide
* OK Cupid has one (they just changed it and had to redo all their illustrations)
* Trello has one
* Tunnelbear has one
Having a traditional artist involved in these illustrations rather than a designer means that the 'hit by a bus' factor is much larger. It is much easier to imitate a vector art style than it is physical technique.
Furthermore, these illustrations have to share the same guidelines as the app itself, which is limited by CSS rules. Natural textures are hard to do in CSS and wasteful, wheras flat colour, borders, and gradients are all up for grabs.
On a similar note, one could complain that the New York Times have terrible consistency with their illustrations, and the differing illustrations fail to portray a cohesive brand image.
So ultimately the author is saying that marketing != art... No shit...
One is a collection of very interesting and diverse styles and approaches to a subject I can't stand looking at. The other is a collection of interesting and useful products in a narrow range of styles that I am completely tired of. But both seem more effective for their intended purposes than if the boring style was representing the abhorrent subject matter, and vice versa.
so the illustrations of the subject that we can't stand to look at must be specifically made to initially appear as something else in order to capture our attention, that explains the diversity. the 'boring style' is just the design equivalent of WWGD, What Would Google Do...
From what I've read I don't get the feeling that he has considered that more often than not, illustration in products often serves as an affordance. As such it needs to be highly legible and brief. Sometimes similar to editorial artwork, but usually with entirely different needs.
"the prevalence of a single, monocultural aesthetic that seemingly almost every startup and tech company and would-be industry disruptor out there has adopted, it’s worth wondering if there’s some other voice—or even a different modulation of this same voice—that could be appropriate."
This, of course, extends far beyond illustration (the topic of the article - the examples provided are striking). I would love to see more variety - especially for styling UI components because I think we can do so much better than Material Design/Metro or Bootstrap.