All these human illustrations on landing pages feel trite

This always happens in web design. Something new comes along, people like it, they start copying each other, and it becomes a trend. After a year or two, people get sick of seeing it everywhere, so they move on, and eventually a new trend picks up.

As a result, since the previous design trend was only popular for a specific period of time, it becomes closely associated with that period. If you keep using that design without changing it, your website will thus feel dated.

It's no different than fashion trends in clothing, really.

So my advice is to stay away from design trends. They're just going to make your website look dated and ugly in a short while, unless you invest the time to redesign it.

Besides, you don't want your website to look like everyone else's website, anyway. That's not how you stand out. Either pick a timeless design, or go further and do the opposite what everyone else is doing. Be unique and memorable. As I am fond of saying, Indie Hackers is blue for a reason…

We intentionally did the consentry.org illustrations in a street art collage style to be different than that. But let’s face it, it’s nerve-wracking. What if customers don’t trust your new brand because it doesn’t look like every other established brand? We’ll see how it goes!

While I totally agree, keep in mind you are "in this startup space" so you see it all the time because you likely look at 100 startup sites a week. The thing is though, most of our target markets are for people outside of our startup community. So to these people, the illustrations are probably very interesting to them and come across as high quality, unique and trustworthy.

Me too. The lack of originality and mindlessly following trends really grates me...

....but at the same time, I understand why we do it. If you want true originality, you have to pay for it. When "trendy" costs $1,000 and "original" costs $10,000, vanishingly few are going to pick "original".

What's more, we perceive the trend because we're involved in the industry. The average customer probably doesn't have a clue. They probably just think you have good design.

I hate to say it, but I agree. It is a tad overdone these days, especially those illustrations of humans with disproportionally large arms and legs. It just seems to cliche now whenever I go to a site and see it. I love that there are so many sources of free art like this now, however I think the downside is that it becomes so ubiquitous that it loses its effect when seen everywhere.

Who knows? Maybe we will go all the way back to gradients and reflection shadows again?!?

https://qz.com/quartzy/1728767/why-editorial-illustrations-look-so-similar-these-days/

Yeah I heard other people talk about it as well on twitter. I know these illustrations are pretty common these days but I'm not gonna lie I do like it, as some of them add their own style. I think it's really about whether you contribute your own personality to this 2D people drawings or only try to copy the trend. Some brands do get it right and I wish I was an illustrator because I have some vision for my landings but there's no way I'm gonna be able to implement them. Hiring an illustrator is not an option when meeting each aws bill is a challenge :D That said, sometimes you just need to sit down and make yourself draw instead of being afraid...

They're free. Getting boring tho. Opportunity for an alternative ...

Haha, that's so true—they're everywhere. Here's my prediction for the next trend: in a year or two, people will go for 3D illustrations next and I'm getting ahead with mine here oneprofile.page

This is one reason why I want to build a product applying brutalist design principles all over the place, given I come up with an idea which lends itself for such thing.

Aside from that I think a brutalistic approach would require even more effort to do right than any other (structured) method.

Edit: Screw it, there already seems to be a framework for that (http://brutalistframework.com/), though it looks more like a 90's website than what I would call brutalism.

Agreed!!! 100%. Hate it.