There’s a phrase every creative has heard at least once in their professional life. A phrase that requires no elaboration, comes without context, and acts as kryptonite to any well-structured work process. That phrase is: “make it like Apple.”

When a client says “make it like Apple,” they’re not making a strategic reference to Jony Ive’s design principles or Steve Jobs’s communication philosophy. They’re saying, with far less self-awareness than they believe, something roughly equivalent to: “I want my product to look good without having to explain to you what that means for us specifically.” It’s the most expensive and least informative creative request in existence.

What Clients Actually Mean When They Say “Like Apple”

The problem with the Apple reference is that it functions like a corporate Rorschach test. Each person sees in it what they want to see. Some clients say “Apple” and picture white backgrounds and minimalist type. Others think of emotional campaigns with indie music and people staring at the horizon with expressions of deep personal purpose. Others are simply remembering an ad they saw two years ago and liked without knowing why.

What almost none of them are thinking about when they say “like Apple” is the decades of user research, the years of brand positioning work, the systemic coherence between product, packaging, retail experience, and communication. They’re not thinking about that because Apple doesn’t sell that process — it sells the final result, polished to obsession. And the client wants the result without the process. Which is exactly like wanting an Olympic athlete’s physique without the training.

The Impossible Reference

Working with references is necessary and useful. Without references there’s no common starting point, no shared visual vocabulary, no efficient way to align expectations. The problem isn’t using references: the problem is using references that aren’t operational.

Apple is a non-operational reference for 99% of projects. Not because it’s bad — it’s probably the best-executed brand of the last forty years — but because its context, resources, and market position are impossible to replicate for a company that isn’t Apple. It’s like asking a neighborhood restaurant to cook “like El Bulli.” El Bulli closed, incidentally, and not for lack of quality.

As we noted in The Eternal Stakeholder Syndrome, the problem with vague references is that each person interprets them differently, generating competing versions of the same project in every stakeholder’s head. When presentation day arrives, the collision is inevitable and usually spectacular.

How to Handle the Apple Reference Without Losing the Project

First: don’t get defensive. When a client says “like Apple,” they’re not being an idiot — they’re using the only language available to them to express an aesthetic aspiration they don’t know how to articulate any other way. Your job as a creative is to translate that aspiration into operational terms.

The question that actually works is: “What is it specifically that you like about that reference?” Not “why Apple?” which sounds confrontational. But “what?” The answer will give you the real clue. If the client says “the simplicity,” you go one direction. If they say “the emotion their ads create,” you go another. If they say “the logo,” you have a different kind of problem.

The second tactic is to bring alternative references that capture the same essence but in a context closer to the client’s reality. If the neighborhood grocery store wants “something like Apple,” show them food brands that have managed to communicate quality and warmth with modest resources. Connect the desire with the reality without destroying the dream.

And if the client insists on “make it like Apple” after every reasonable attempt at clarification — document the reference, draw your own informed conclusions, and present your solution explaining how it incorporates the spirit of the reference without attempting to literally copy what cannot be copied. The client who gets this becomes a collaborator. The one who doesn’t… well, we cover that type in our guide to the types of clients every creative has suffered through.

The Happy Ending That Almost Never Happens

The Apple reference, properly managed, can be a strong starting point for a good project. It forces a conversation about brand values, positioning, what the company really wants to convey. That conversation, painful at first, is precisely the conversation that poorly briefed projects never have.

The problem is that few clients have the patience for that conversation. And few creatives have the skill or confidence to lead it. The result is a process where nobody says exactly what they want and everyone interprets what they think the other wants. And in the end, when the result isn’t “like Apple,” everyone wonders what went wrong.

What went wrong was that nobody asked the right question at the right moment. As almost always. And as we explored in how to write a brief that doesn’t make you cry, the right question asked early is worth ten right answers given too late.

Your next client wants “something like Apple” on a corner-store budget? Stop by our shop. We don’t sell magic, but we do have something to help you hold it together.