Third slide of the kickoff deck, and there it is. A photograph of an iPhone box with the lid lifting off in that slow reluctant way, and underneath it, in twelve point type, the words we want to feel like this.
I have now seen this slide at three companies. One made project management software, one made granola bars, and one made industrial flooring adhesive. The image changes slightly. The ask never does. Minimalist packaging. A one word tagline. White space. Confidence.
What they are asking for is the output of thirty years of decisions they did not make.
Minimalism is not a design choice, it is a report on how much your buyer already knows about you before the package is in their hand.
Apple can put a product photo and a single word on a wall because two generations of people can finish the sentence themselves. That was not always true, and the company did not behave this way when it was not true. The early iMac work explained the thing at length, in color, with ports and prices and a lot of talking. Think Different used faces and copy because the brand needed to borrow meaning it had not yet built. The silence came last. It was a result, not a strategy.
Here is what I have watched from inside brand strategy rooms. A team adopts the visual language of a category leader, ships it, and then discovers the packaging no longer tells anyone what the product is, what it costs, or why it is different from the cheaper one beside it on the shelf. Sales soften. Nobody connects the two, because the deck was beautiful and everyone approved it.
Go look at a pint of Salt & Straw. It is covered in words. It has to be, because the company is asking a stranger to spend nine dollars on ice cream with olive oil in it, and that stranger has a reasonable question. Oatly does the same thing, badly on purpose, and it works for the same reason.
What they are asking for is the output of thirty years of decisions they did not make.
So, three questions instead of that slide. One, what does a buyer already know about you at the moment of decision, honestly, without flattering yourselves. Two, where is the doubt, and are you spending words there. Three, what would you have to do for five years to earn the right to say nothing. Answer those and you will build something that looks like you, which is the only thing that has ever worked anyway.
Every other Thursday I sing at a bar in Southeast Portland where the host calls everyone baby. Nobody there lets me skip to the part where the room already trusts me. I have to sing the whole song, badly, all the way through.