7 of 365 – Archetypes design principle by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
Archetypes allow designers to make good design decisions about the alignment of the emotional content of a design and the best use of color, line, fonts and other design elements. Archetypes can be classic ones, such as good and evil, sweet and bitter, happy and sad, but can also be much more subtle. Nike tends to make use of the battered hero archetype, using photos of athletes in heroic poses and stark visual conditions. Coca Cola makes use of the happy stereotype, always showing people in the best of moods. These brands could go against archetype, but because there is a certain kind of alignment between those types and the brand, it should not.
In my illustration here, I used a Zen, minimalist archetype to illustrate the traditional zen quote “Catch the vigorous horse of your mind”. I might have chosen to go with a pop approach, or an angry type, but the message and its treatment would have been in conflict.
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