The beige era of product design: how to stand out with digital 'jewelry'

The article, published on LinkedIn by Sasha Grishin, starts from a personal observation: he can't walk past a newly launched car without noticing details such as the headlights' light signature or the wheel design. Those details give it personality and character, while the rest of the car is increasingly generic. That phenomenon, he says, has a name: convergence.

According to the author, convergence is neither new nor accidental, and many others have written about it. He mentions some images recently published by Luke Wroblewski showing how products look more and more alike. His argument is that when a technology matures, it leaves behind the most optimized design, which by definition is also the one everyone else arrives at.

The piece gives examples of this process across different sectors. Aircraft converge on a standard because of aerodynamics. Cars do so because of safety regulations. Phones and TVs converge on the most basic form because what matters to people is what appears on the screen.

The author argues that the same is happening with digital products, especially lately, and points to three causes. First, AI tools are trained on the same references and generate results based on probability, so they reproduce the most common solution. That is why "vibe design" tools have given rise to a multitude of look-alike products. Second, popular UI libraries such as shadcn/ui have made apps "wear the same suit." Third, optimization culture has produced safe winners that resemble one another.

That raises the question for designers: if everything looks the same, how do you stand out and how do you become memorable?

The answer he proposes comes from the intersection of two disciplines the author appreciates, product design and automotive design. In car design there is the concept of "jewellery." It refers to small, well-designed and well-crafted details that elevate a car's aesthetics and convey quality or luxury. The examples he gives are light signatures, a knurled dial, badges and a door handle. Remove the badges, and most modern cars in the same segment share more or less the same design decisions; it is the jewellery that makes them feel different. The piece illustrates the idea with the air vent of the Mini Countryman, the Swarovski headlights of the BMW 7 Series and the key of the Porsche Project S.

Digital products, he argues, need the same approach. Design teams must identify what their jewellery is. This is not decoration for its own sake. Jewellery lives in highly distinctive moments worth amplifying through UX/UI, moments when the experience should feel special.

As an example, the author cites a Deel concept for time logging. Time tracking is essential for contractors who are paid by usage, and it is also, he admits, one of the least appealing tasks of the workday. Shahriyar M., who leads mobile design at Deel, explored how the iPhone Duo form factor could change that. The device folds like a tent on the desk and becomes a clock dedicated to working hours. It shows the timer front and center, with "pause" and "take a break" buttons and nothing else, plus a soft, relaxing glow.

For those looking for their own jewellery, the author offers several tips, which he presents as personal opinion:

• Look for emotionally charged moments, such as the first payment received or a signed contract.

• Pay attention to mundane, repetitive tasks. If the boring becomes pleasant, it becomes memorable.

• Be ruthless about quantity. A car with jewellery on every surface looks like a Christmas tree, so pick a few moments and protect them.

• Name those moments explicitly. Jewellery is the first thing to be cut when deadlines tighten, and naming it helps it survive the roadmap.

The conclusion is that convergence is not the enemy but the floor. Standardize what users expect so you can spend your energy where they don't expect it.

The comments on the page add nuance. Mike McGuire values the piece but thinks it treats product and experience as something to be "beautified," something industrial design has always had to grapple with. He believes that treating jewellery as a principle often responds to functional and experience weaknesses, that surprise and delight don't make up for poor product value or flow, and that digital products benefit from established conventions, so boring probably works. In his view, AI doesn't make this worse; it just speeds up deployment and underscores mediocre patterns.

Benek Lisefski shares the analogy and notes that familiar interfaces have value. He adds that the most memorable thing about a product isn't always how it looks but how it behaves, and that this jewellery increasingly comes in the form of interaction and motion. Aaron Hawkins hopes the beige era and the contrast with "AI slop" signs will push designers to innovate toward a new stage. Chad Rawlinson compares it to the Bootstrap era, when every site looked the same. Paul Hill sums up his position with "blame design systems."

The article is an opinion piece and provides no quantitative data or studies. Its value lies in its conceptual framework: accepting uniformity as a baseline and focusing differentiating design effort on a few key moments.