The Shapeshifter or Trickster archetype, is used by brands like Squarespace or Confused.com to blend the fear of the unknown with humour to communicate new possibilities.

From Elephant Man to Burning Man, people have attended shows to be entertained and laugh at the unknown; the weird and frightening.

A human need that’s often represented through the spirit of the carnival’s magical and grotesque realism as shown in this Squarespace campaign. Something Mikhail Bakhtin, a Russian philosopher, who worked on the philosophy of language talked about.

“The principle of laughter and the carnival spirit on which the grotesque is based destroys this limited seriousness and all pretence of an extratemporal meaning and unconditional value of necessity. It frees human consciousness, thought, and imagination for new potentialities. For this reason, great changes, even in the field of science, are always preceded by a certain carnival consciousness that prepares the way.”

So, providing Squarespace customers the feeling of unlimited possibilities. Or in their words ‘Everything to sell anything’.