// visual culture

Source: New Yorker Science & Technology (paywall)

As startups adopt AI design tools to rapidly produce marketing materials, a homogenized visual language—sleek gradients, rounded forms, stock photography aesthetics—is becoming the default. This reverses a decade of design-driven startup culture where distinctive visual identity was a competitive advantage; now the fastest path to funding and customer acquisition is indistinguishability. The cost is the erosion of craft as a business value. Differentiation will eventually shift back to product itself or toward deliberate anti-AI aesthetics as a contrarian signal.