In the textbooks, resistance to change looks dramatic: barricades, confrontations, sabotage. In my experience it is far more polite. It smiles, nods in the meeting, and then carries on doing exactly what it did before. During the INPS rebranding — years spent introducing guidelines in a territory that had been free for decades — I had the chance to observe it up close, and over time I learned to tell a few recurring archetypes apart. I describe them with affection: behind each one there are almost always people acting in good faith, dealing with new rules in a domain they had always considered "their own business".
The Fool
The most common archetype. Its instrument is selective distraction: a colour "interpreted", a logo "adapted", a typeface "only slightly different". Never a blatant violation — always a small deviation, plausible, defensible. Absent-mindedness or cunning, it makes little difference: the result is a way to keep doing things as before, with the clear conscience of someone who can say they "tried to follow the guidelines". You recognise the Fool by the tone: point out the deviation and they are genuinely taken aback. Sometimes genuinely — and that's the beauty of it: this archetype includes both genuine performers and excellent actors, and telling them apart is practically impossible.
The Pedant
A more sophisticated archetype, thriving in the regulatory gap. No manual can anticipate every case: when the Pedant meets one that isn't covered yet, instead of asking or deriving a solution from the principles, they take it as a licence for a free-for-all. The absence of an explicit example becomes the perfect excuse to return to old habits. This is where you see the difference between those who join a project and those who merely endure it: the first uses the manual as a reference from which to derive consistent solutions; the second treats it as a rulebook to be circumvented the moment a rule is missing. The Pedant, paradoxically, is a devoted reader of the manual: they know it better than the people who wrote it, but they read it like a defence lawyer.
The Ninja
The most theatrical archetype, and my personal favourite. The act always starts well: a request for an exception, polite and transparent. "I'd like to do this off-standard thing, may I?" A patient "no, you may not" follows. And at that point, the vanishing. No reply, no escalation, no protest: just silence. Weeks pass, sometimes months. Then the project reappears — published, in plain sight, exactly as it had been proposed in the first place.
A classic act of courteous disobedience, amusing only if you don't count the time spent putting things back in order afterwards.
Camouflaged variant: "it's only graphics, after all"
There is a fourth figure, observed later, once the function tasked with guarding the rules came into being. This variant strikes in moments of haste: when institutional deadlines loom and the workload grows, the recurring temptation is to brush the oversight aside with an "it's only graphics, after all". A step skipped, a silent exception, a partial application. It is the hardest to counter, because it never presents itself as conflict but as "other priorities" — and it is often perfectly sincere: it reflects an incomplete understanding of why those rules exist, in a culture where design and communication are still perceived as aesthetic detail.
The Fool. Where you meet it: everywhere. How to spot it: small, plausible deviations. Typical line: "oh, really?"
The Pedant. Where you meet it: the edges of the manual. How to spot it: knows the rules better than you. Typical line: "but this case isn't covered".
The Ninja. Where you meet it: unknown. How to spot it: asks, takes the no, disappears. Typical line: none — it's the silence.
Camouflaged variant. Where you meet it: deadlines. How to spot it: sincere urgency. Typical line: "it's only graphics, after all".
Living with it
And now the serious part. Resistance, in my experience, has never been something you defeat once and for all: it's a condition to live with — a silent force, always present, pulling the organization back towards its original equilibrium. Is the certainty of a few acts of insubordination a reason not to run the project? Obviously not. It means accepting that absolute consistency doesn't exist, and that the entire value of a governance lies in making exceptions recognisable, isolated and manageable. That holds for a brand manual as much as for a design system.
Which is why, in the end, I've grown fond of these figures. They are the physiological travelling companions of any real change, and even something of an indicator: if nobody in your project plays the fool, nobody hunts for loopholes and nobody vanishes into thin air, perhaps your guidelines aren't touching anything that matters.