Birth of a Notion

Behavioral economics tells us much about irrational factors in our choices (but rational when considering our evolutionary history),but design in brands plays a unique role I would argue by virtue of the universal appeal of what is called by some "variety in unity". Since the time of Descartes, several writers have asserted that unity in design (as an extreme example, an array of geometrically identical forms of the same color) is boring, and variety alone (lots of different forms and colors, but not organized) is confusing. Too avoid both boredom and confusion, one needs variety in some unifying pattern(s), which as it turns out, subjects in psychological experiments prefer to all variety-no unity or vice versa. Recordings of brain waves from scalp electrodes shows that patterns with "variety in unity" elicits a moderate degree of brain activation (as well as preference), whereas unity w/o variety leads to low activation, and variety without unity leads to very high activation. So, we prefer variety in unity because it leads to the moderate state of arousal that most of us prefer most of the time, avoiding boredom and confusion. Perhaps creators of marketing designs are already aware of this.If they're not, they should be.