I’ve been doing this job for over five years, and I’ve been viewing concept work (amongst produced work) ever since. We’ve covered plenty of it, from brands built as speculative exercises to student-produced projects. That’s nothing new. What is new, however, is the sheer volume of concept work, and fictional brands have inundated my feed at a rate that feels significant. 

Honestly, it’s disorienting. I used to be able to spot a concept from a mile off, and the signs were obvious, like a category that doesn’t quite exist yet or packaging with no barcode, no fine print, no regulatory disclaimers anywhere on it. Those tells still exist, sure, but they’re getting fainter and fainter, and it’s becoming harder for me to tell whether a brand is real, even with a trained eye.  

A decade ago, building a brand, including its identity, packaging, photography, a website, and a tone of voice, took a team and money. You needed a strategist to iron out positioning, a designer to translate that into something visual, a photographer to take pictures, a developer to build it out, and enough money and time that nobody bothered unless there was an actual product behind it, or at least the intention to make one. If you saw a fully developed brand, the odds were good that it was real.