EXHIBIT: POST MORTEM GENERICA
STATUS: OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
CURATOR: VOX ANIMUS
An autopsy
of default design
of default design
Nobody ever built a brand by accident. But millions have destroyed one.
These are the exhibits. The purple gradients. The empty headlines. The bento boxes. The fake reviews. The stock photos of strangers gathered around a laptop with psychotic smiles. “Teamwork!”
Somewhere, a founder is refreshing their dashboard. Changing the headline. Adding another feature to the grid. Wondering what’s missing.
What’s missing is a pulse.
I’m going to tell you how they died. Most of them were never alive. This is the morgue.
Warning: prolonged exposure may cause taste.
EVIDENCE INDEX
FILED
Click a specimen to jump to the body. If you can’t verify it, it’s not evidence.
EVIDENCE (REVEALED)
Tap again to close the file.
SPECIMEN 001
The Purple Gradient
TYPE: COLOR
COD: SURRENDER
STATUS: DECEASED
PRIMARY SYMPTOM: MEANING-LESS SIGNAL
EVIDENCE
- Purple into blue: the universal "SaaS, but tired."
- Feels "modern." Communicates nothing.
- Exists to be liked by everyone. Owned by no one.
MECHANISM
This gradient is the color of surrender. Purple into blue, like a bruise that learned to code. It showed up in 2019, went viral in 2021, and now it's everywhere, doing nothing, meaning nothing, asking for your email.
"Unlock Your Full Potential." Potential for what. A cleaner inbox? A more optimized version of your own mediocrity?
The gradient works the way beige walls work. Nothing bad happens. Nothing good either. It's a room with no windows. A product with no face. A brand so afraid of being something that it became nothing on purpose.
IMPACT
Your product becomes ambient. People remember the gradient, not the brand.
LAST WORDS
"I wanted it to feel modern." — ANONYMOUS
PRESCRIPTION
RX / MEANING
Pick a color that means something. Or pick nothing at all. Grey is a decision. Purple-to-blue is the absence of one. If your brand could be anyone's brand, it's no one's.
Dosage: one visual decision you can explain without saying "modern."
SPECIMEN 002
The Inter 400
TYPE: TYPOGRAPHY
COD: NON-CHOICE
STATUS: DECEASED
PRIMARY SYMPTOM: GRAY-600
EVIDENCE
- Inter everywhere. Distinction nowhere.
- Weight 400: the typographic shrug.
- Looks "professional." Reads "forgettable."
MECHANISM
Inter is good enough. That's the problem. It's so aggressively inoffensive it can mediate a divorce between Helvetica and Arial. Weight 400 isn't a decision. It's the default setting on the printer of life.
Not bold enough to commit. Not light enough to intrigue. It's standing in the middle of the road, waiting to get hit by something with more conviction.
IMPACT
This isn't typography. It's a cry for help.
LAST WORDS
"It's not Arial." — JOHN DOE
PRESCRIPTION
RX / NOTICEABILITY
Give people something to notice. A typeface with texture. A weight with intent. A headline that looks like it believes itself. Your brand is allowed to have opinions about letters.
Dosage: one typographic decision you can defend, daily.
SPECIMEN 003
The Bento Box
TYPE: LAYOUT
COD: ALIBI
STATUS: DECEASED
PRIMARY SYMPTOM: PADDED TILES
EVIDENCE
- Three little tiles. Four if you drank a matcha and called it momentum.
- Lucide icons + two-word obscurity + one sentence that dies like a goldfish.
- A grid that looks busy enough to pass as "clear."
MECHANISM
The bento box is what you build when you can't look your own product in the eye.
And the icons. Bolt. Shield. Chart. Gear. The same sad sitcom cast re-running on every landing page since the dawn of Tailwind. They're not symbols anymore. They're IKEA. Flat-pack confidence. You assemble it with an Allen key and a prayer.
The tiles never explain because explanation is commitment. Commitment is dangerous. So you get padded walls. Safe claims. Soft corners. Nobody can argue with a sentence that refuses to finish itself.
Your bento box isn't a features section. It's an alibi. It says you weren't there when your point died, but you brought matching icons to the funeral.
IMPACT
Users remember the grid. They forget what it was trying to say.
LAST WORDS
"I should probably show our features somewhere." — WENDY'S EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH
PRESCRIPTION
RX / SPECIFICITY
Say one thing well. If you can't pick your best feature, you don't know your product yet. Kill the grid. Write a sentence that makes someone feel something. If you must list features, make each one specific enough that it couldn't appear on your competitor's site.
Dosage: one committed claim. No tiles required.
EVIDENCE (REVEALED)
Tap again to close the file.
SPECIMEN 004
The Social Proof
TYPE: CREDIBILITY
COD: ANESTHESIA
STATUS: DECEASED
PRIMARY SYMPTOM: UNVERIFIABLE NUMBERS
EVIDENCE
- "Trusted by 10,000+ teams worldwide." No receipts.
- "4.9 from 2,847 reviews." No link. No source. No witness.
- Five strangers in circles. Same smile. Same stock license.
MECHANISM
"Trusted by 10,000+ teams worldwide." The shield icon is a nice touch. Nothing says security like a shape. Ten thousand teams. "Worldwide" is doing the same work "scientifically proven" does in shampoo ads. It's not information. It's anesthesia.
Then the precision lie. "4.9 from 2,847 reviews." Not five stars. Five would be suspicious. 4.9 suggests humility. 2,847 suggests paperwork. Together they create the illusion of measurement. There's no link. No source. No way to find review #2,847 and ask it what it meant by "excellent."
Then the five strangers cropped into circles, stacked like poker chips. The only commonality is symmetrical cheekbones and a Creative Commons license. And Sarah Mitchell. Five gold stars. A real name! A real title! Marketing Manager at Growthly. Growthly. A company named after Y Combinator's polite fart.
IMPACT
When "proof" can't be checked, it becomes decoration. Trust doesn't increase. Suspicion does.
LAST WORDS
"We need social proof." — SOMEONE WHO HAD NONE
PRESCRIPTION
RX / VERIFIABILITY
One real person. One real result. One way to verify it. If you have zero users, say nothing. Silence beats fiction. If you have one user, call them and ask what changed. Write that down. That's your proof. If you have traction, link to it. Let people click through to the reviews, the post, the screenshot. The moment you add a link, the numbers stop being decoration and start being evidence.
Dosage: one link per claim. If you can't link it, don't say it.
EVIDENCE (REVEALED)
Tap again to close the file.
SPECIMEN 005
The Glassmorphism
TYPE: SURFACE
COD: FROSTED PANIC
STATUS: DECEASED
PRIMARY SYMPTOM: BLUR AS DEPTH
EVIDENCE
- A floating card: blurred, bordered, trying very hard to feel expensive.
- A 1px white border and a committee-approved opacity value.
- Blur radius cranked like it's hiding something worth seeing.
MECHANISM
Apple put frost on a window and called it vision. Now every landing page looks like it's rendering through a shower door.
The card floats there, blurred and bordered, a rectangle trying very hard to feel expensive. You can see the gradient through it. Purple. Teal. Pink. A lava lamp died for this.
The border is 1 pixel. White. Some percentage of opacity that someone argued about in a meeting. 10%. 20%. 40%. Just visible enough to exist. Just invisible enough to seem effortless. It's not effortless. Someone tweaked that number six times and shipped it angry.
The blur radius wants you to believe there's a rich interface behind it. There isn't. There's a gradient doing yoga and a div begging for mercy.
IMPACT
Everything looks "premium." Nothing looks like you.
LAST WORDS
"What if we do the trendy thing Apple does?" — THE GUY WHO BOUGHT STOCK AT THE TOP
PRESCRIPTION
RX / CONTEXT
Glassmorphism isn't always wrong. It's wrong as a default. Glass works when there's something behind it worth seeing. A live dashboard with moving data. A modal over an interface the user needs to remember. Layers that actually exist. Not everything needs to look like a window. Your brand defines your visuals. Trends don't.
Dosage: if the background isn't meaningful, remove the glass.
SPECIMEN 006
The AI-Powered Badge
TYPE: LABEL
COD: NERVOUS TIC
STATUS: DECEASED
PRIMARY SYMPTOM: SPARKLE ICON
EVIDENCE
- "AI-Powered." The two words that mean everything and nothing.
- A sparkle icon. Always a sparkle. Stars. Glitter. Magic dust.
- Says "we're smart." Communicates "we're scared you'll miss it."
MECHANISM
AI-Powered. The two words that mean everything and nothing.
In 2021, this badge meant innovation. In 2026, it means you have an OpenAI key and fifteen dollars in credits.
Putting "AI-Powered" on your product is like putting "Contains Electricity" on a lamp. Technically true. Incessantly unhelpful. Everyone has AI now. Everyone has the same AI.
You didn't build AI. You use AI. That's fine. That's normal. Stop making it your headline. Your headline should be what the AI helps your customer do. The AI is the how. Nobody buys the how.
IMPACT
Your product becomes a commodity with a sticker. The badge doesn't create trust. It creates sameness.
LAST WORDS
"But we ARE using AI!" — EVERYONE
PRESCRIPTION
RX / OUTCOME
Delete the badge. Say what your product does and how it benefits your audience. "Summarizes legal contracts in 10 seconds." "Finds the receipt from 2015." "Writes the first draft while you sleep." The AI is implied. The result is the point. Lead with the result. Bury the implementation.
Dosage: one outcome statement. No sparkles.
SPECIMEN 007
The Stock Photo
TYPE: IMAGERY
COD: PERFORMATIVE REALITY
STATUS: DECEASED
PRIMARY SYMPTOM: FOUR STRANGERS SMILING
EVIDENCE
- Four strangers at a table, performing work for a camera.
- One guy in headphones. He's "the developer."
- Wood walls + laptops + soft smiles = "startup."
MECHANISM
Four strangers at a table, performing work for a camera.
There's always one guy in headphones. He's "the developer." You can tell because his screen has colored text on a dark background. He's not looking at anyone. He's "in the zone."
The others are arranged like a word problem. Two people face each other but neither is speaking. One is looking at a laptop showing what appears to be a website with a leaf on it. Nature? Wellness? She must be the marketer.
The wooden walls say "startup," but the kind of startup that exists in a stock photographer's mood board. Real startups have fluorescent lighting and anxiety in the air. Real startups have one guy who always takes calls in the stairwell and a Slack channel called "random" that's 40% memes and 60% passive aggression.
This photo is a lie, but it's a specific kind of lie. It says: these people are aligned. These people share purpose. These people definitely don't have a meeting in 10 minutes where someone's going to say "per my last email" and mean it as a threat.
IMPACT
You borrow someone else's credibility and end up with someone else's personality.
LAST WORDS
"We should probably have an About Us section." — RECLUSE FOUNDER #845
PRESCRIPTION
RX / HONESTY
You don't need a team page if you don't have a team yet. A solo founder is a story, not a weakness. "Built in Dayton, Ohio by someone who couldn't find a tool that worked" is more interesting than four strangers in circles. If you do want to show faces, use real ones. Phone cameras work. Zoom screenshots work. Blurry beats fake every time. And if you're not ready to be seen, that's fine too. Let the product be the face until you're ready to show yours.
Dosage: one true detail. Then stop posing.