The New Punk: Why Antiaesthetic Branding Is On The Rise

When polish takes seconds to apply, is it still polish, or just a lack of imagination? In the words of The Incredibles' enraged hero-worshipper turned villain Buddy Pine a.k.a Syndrome: "When everyone’s super, no one will be".

And from an advertising perspective, adam&EveDDB’s executive creative director Mark Shanley agrees: “If everything looks the same, how the hell do you stand out?”

Because AI can fix a layout, match a colour palette, and correct grammar in minutes, perfection is increasingly no great distinguisher. It's simply too easy to obtain. Too ubiquitous. Not awe-inspiring..

To combat the sea of neatly algorithmic sameneness, brands are increasingly avoiding the inane by celebrating analogue DIY or shedding light on joyfully messy humanity: whether it’s the V&A museum spotlighting niche interests, Haagen Dazs turning food porn on its head with a messy magnum stick, or the handcrafted logo of Islington and Hackney’s beloved Jolene bakery by Studio Frith.

Culturally too, there’s a resurgence: David Bowie’s cut-up method and his playful style are trending again thanks to the V&A, punk and New Wave are back on the runway, and the Design Museum is celebrating the freeing, defiant and messy cool of the Blitz Club.

It might just be that anti-aesthetic imperfection is the last vestige of humanity for brands.

But what does being anti-aesthetic actually mean? Why are we here now, and where might it take us next?

What is anti-aesthetics?

Not quite ugly (because that’s in the eye of the beholder). Not conventionally beautiful. Different. Purposeful but not traditional. The term gained traction in the politically charged 80s when art critic Hal Foster edited 'The Antiaesthetic: Essays On Post-Modern Culture', a collection rejecting modernism’s elitism in favour of subversion and critique - with contributions from thinkers like Edward Said and Douglas Crimp, who challenged dominant aesthetics through postcolonial, feminist and queer perspectives.

At the time, artists like Cindy Sherman, David Wojnarowicz, and Jenny Holzer dismantled ideas about beauty, authorship, and systems of authority - using irony to question preconceived notions about power and identity.

Art has a much longer legacy of rejecting tradition in favour of rawness, emotion, and defiance: Goya’s bleak, unvarnished darkness in the late 18th and early 19th century (which flipped the dial from the aesthetics of the. Old Masters to a new era of modern painting). And the 1920s gave raise to works like Chaim Soutine's twisted carcasses and landscapes - the art critic Peter Scjeldahl described his work as "like something between a mud-wrestling match and a fight to the death" - and in turn a whole breadth of unfiltered expressionist works from the Slade School of artists.

It is no surprise that this defiant, raw and human spirit has returned in today’s hyper-polished (and yet deeply uncertain) world. As Adam&Eve DDB’s brand and business partner Rani Patel explains, “The anti-aesthetic makes you stop and think. It’s not there to solve or appease - it’s there to confront.”

It’s a reaction, she suggests, to a design landscape where everything looks the same, shaped by shared tools and recycled references.

BBH’s CCO Felipe Serradourada Guimaraes adds that we’re craving the tactile and imperfect - a return to formats with “texture, imperfection and human touch. In a world of infinite scroll and algorithmic sameness, the anti-aesthetic offers something raw, real, and worth lingering on."

Scruffy: The Death Of Polish

So strong is the desire to embrace imperfection that even awkwardness is now seen as a badge of honour. The Face magazine (recently revived in cultural relevance after its National Portrait Gallery exhibition) has explored why Gen Z is celebrating awkwardness: as a quiet rebellion against the constant pressure to perform and curate online, and celebrating the uncomfortableness of everyday interactions.

In recent years, this has also played out in bold advertising:

Winning Gold Lion in the film category at Cannes 2025', Never Just A Period' created by AMV BBDO for Bodyform confrontingly and honestly tackled the realities of having a period. The operatic spot is packed with humour-filled references to the loneliness of unappealing smells (spedifically a wet dog) and figuring out how to manage the discomfort.

There was an all female Greek-inspired chorus, eye-rolling paintings. Everything about it was human, relatable and powerfully awkward.

And yet, while Gen X raged against the machine constructing looks, bands, DIY magazines, and ideas that shocked - for Gen Z, even counter-culture has started to feel contrived as a result of the pace at which algorithm-driven microtrends and the speed at which AI can create work.

“There’s a world where things feel like they’ve been captured in the best possible light - spontaneous, honest - as opposed to something overly constructed, which can feel a bit rigid or contrived…perhaps it’s reflective of the times, with AI becoming increasingly precise and flawless - but also a bit soulless, lacking in humanity,” argues Seradourada Guimaraes.

Discussing BBH’s recent out-of-home work showcasing Haagen Dazs’s magnum ice cream Serradourada Guimaraes adds that the aim of the work was to hint back at the nostalgic feeling of the last bit of a Magnum ice cream.

“If it had been too orchestrated, it would’ve felt cold. You need it to feel like you’ve just finished eating it, tossed it aside, and caught that beautiful, messy moment - ice cream melting, bits crumbling."

Similarly, tasked with rebranding the V&A in order to make it more appealing to a younger generation, adam&Eve DDB celebrated the DIY impact of niche subcultures, giving such expression equal footing with established works.

“It's funny, we didn't set out to have an anti-aesthetic look and feel to it. It just sort of happened organically, because it had to be that way,” explains Shanley.

For those looking to show up in niche subculture spaces, he explains that it's crucial to “actually start talking to them.

“When we started to do case studies or press releases, you ended up with a key visual or two - and we didn’t have that in this case. It all looked so disparate and different – which was lovely but did not feel much like an ad campaign,” he adds.

Imperfectly Perfect

In a similar effort to avoid appearing obviously commercial, there is a rise in brands tapping into childlike illustrations.

When Mother Design created a new look for dog food service Tails.com, it used hand-drawn illustrations.

“Dog lovers believe every dog is unique, so using illustration became a way to connect with consumers on a different level. If we had used constructed visuals, they might’ve just blurred into the sameness you see on most dog food packaging," explains Mother Design executive creative director Kirsty Minns.

She adds that many of the designs created by illustrators were based on dogs in the office, so that each represented an individual character.

"Even when something looks naive or messy, there's often a real creative decision behind it...designers are constructing that image with purpose," adds Minns.

Another extremely relatable campaign came from Ikea when it opened its first store in Brighton. Mother London celebrated the very human experience of living in the seaside city with an ode to seagulls and the consequences of having your chips beneath them.

Coinciding with this, it created a set of out-of-home ads that depicted brightly coloured Ikea furniture destroyed by seagull poo. For once, shit didn't stink.

Meawhile, in its work for Tesco BBH has tapped into a reportage style look with scrunched up receipts, or photography which looks like a subtle, everyday moment with Tesco bags featuring slogans such as "Relax".

"Even the Tesco bags we did - they were meant to feel like reportage... messy but beautifully art directed... The lighting was in the wrong way, the right way... to give you enough sense of ‘it’s real,’ but also ‘wow, what a moment," explains Serradourada Guimaraes.

While captured images feel like they have been caught in the moment, with natural lighting, flaws and subjects that are not posed, constructed images have a high production value, more symmetry and feel composed.

For Serradourada Guimaraes it's the captured element that makes things feel real and human but everything is in the execution: "Even the Tesco bags we did - they were meant to feel like reportage... messy but beautifully art directed... The lighting was in the wrong way, the right way... to give you enough sense of ‘it’s real,’ but also ‘wow, what a moment," he explains.

He draws a distinction between lack of consideration and anti-design. "Sometimes anti-aesthetics is mistaken for just making things ugly. It still needs to feel seamless, soft, and easy - not easy," explains Serradourada Guimaraes.

While the technique works for brands such as Tesco which are a key part of everyday life, it doesn't work so well for brands such as Audi which is more design-focused.

"Some brands require a refined design language. For example, Audi — it's about precision. Anti-design wouldn’t feel right there. You have to design from the brand out, not force trends into it," he says.

He also highlights the importance of anti-design work feeling seamless: "It wasn't just because we thought it'd be cool. The idea required a sense of looseness to land," he adds.

Functional: The Irony Age

While anti-aesthetics plays on the irony between looseness and composure, it also twists definitions of what is useful and aesthetic, and what is not.

Whilst form usually follows function, in high-end circles, [according to essayist Andy Blunden] having items that serve no purpose other than signifying status is a marker of wealth and prestige.

Except, in a case of double irony, nowadays having remakes of traditional, very functional and accessible items as extortionate items has become a new form of high-end anti-aesthetics, particularly in fashion.

Brands such as Balenciaga have been criticised for appropriating (or remaking?) items like the Thai market bag and selling it for almost four figures in British pounds.

"The luxury industry is fascinating because it's... the power of saying 'this is now valuable,' even if it's not functional. That’s branding as performance," explains Minns.

Mother recently riffed on this trope in its work for Ikea, in which it transformed its utilitarian Frakta bags into a high-end fashion item.

For Minns, this is a way for Ikea to say that it has the capability to assign status just like luxury brands before it.

"I suppose we’ve been doing that for centuries if we think about ready-mades and Duchamp and that world – again, that critique within design, that irony, that in-joke," explains Minns.

While Minns believes that anti-design has always been centred around resistance, she believes it now takes place in softer ways.

"It often starts as resistance, then becomes the visual norm - which is the irony of anti-design trends," she argues.

"The punk movement was angry - now there are more nuanced ways of doing anti-design like irony or softness," she explains highlighting the success of Ashish Gupta at London Fashion Week, whose designs put a glittery and whimsical twist on punk aesthetics.

Ultimately, the success of anti-design in branding and advertising leans on political and cultural raging against the machine.

When the 20s and 80s were filled with political tide-turning, it was impossible to ignore tribalism.

Now, at the crossroads of not just game-changing technological innovation and deep political divides, it's no wonder young people are once again angry.

But anti-aesthetic branding isn’t laziness or rebellion for rebellion’s sake - it’s a calculated return to something raw, real, and unmistakably human.

Just like Syndrome's obsession and eventual disdain for superheroes, consumers are increasingly discerning about AI polish - and advertisers ignore that at their peril, because if they're too late, they risk no longer being super.

Brands, particularly high-end ones, are likely to continue to rebel against AI-like sheen, because when everyone's Instagram is flawless, no one's really is.