Open any D2C Indian brand’s Instagram. Can you tell them apart?
There’s a word for what’s happening: “blanding.” It’s a business problem wearing a design costume.
Global design circles call it “blanding” — brands stripping away identity in pursuit of looking modern. Bold colour becomes a muted palette. Strong type becomes rounded sans-serif. Packaging gets cleaner, softer, quieter. Individually, each choice looks premium. Collectively, entire categories start looking identical.
Indian D2C has fallen hard for this look. Skincare, coffee, snacks, beverages, home care, even fashion — same playbook. Beige. Minimal layouts. Soft photography. A curated pastel grid. The execution is polished. The personality is missing. It’s not bad design — it’s design nobody remembers.
This is a business problem before it’s a design problem. When every pack looks equally premium, customers default to price, reviews, or marketplace rank instead of brand memory. Distinction stops doing its job — so performance marketing has to work overtime to buy the recognition branding should have earned for free.
It wasn’t always this way. Paper Boat built a whole identity out of nostalgia and illustration. boAt made itself unmistakable with colour and youth-culture swagger. Amul has stayed relevant for decades on the strength of one mascot and one campaign format. None of these brands won by looking minimal. They won by looking like themselves.
Minimalism isn’t the problem. Sameness is.
WHAT CLUNK® THINKS
Minimalism isn’t the problem. Mindless minimalism is. The goal of branding isn’t to look premium. The goal is to become recognizable. If customers can’t identify your product without reading the logo, your visual identity isn’t building equity — it’s blending into the category.
Every successful brand owns something that competitors can’t replicate. That’s where real brand value begins.
How does it land?
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