Tilt[ed.11, 2026]
For the last few years my primary job has been ‘brand designer’ and as a result, I have run a lot of brand workshops. If you’ve ever done one, you’ll be familiar with the slightly eccentric activities involved, designed to get you thinking about your brand beyond a logo and colour palette.
As a result, I’m always keeping an eye out for new ways to conceptualise a ‘brand’ and stumbled across this article a couple of weeks ago that I haven’t been able to get out of my head.
*I’ll briefly summarise below but I’d strongly recommend reading for yourself!
Brand building as world building
The central argument of the piece is that focussing on brand archetypes (a 12 pillar framework, rooted in Carl Jung's psychological theory of universal character types) is part of what makes so many modern brands look the same. Everyone uses the same framework, so every brand ends up fitting neatly into one of the 12 boxes.
Instead, the author proposes creating ‘genres’. Instead of asking ‘who is this brand trying to be?’ we should start with the question 'what world is this brand building?’.
While I don’t think you should ever rely on just one brand framework, I tested out this ‘world building’ concept at our Project Planet strategy retreat last week and I feel like there’s definitely something to it.