Some beards look as if they need their own project manager. There is the original idea, the part that grew beyond the original idea, and a small section near the chin that nobody wants to take responsibility for. The owner is still calling it a personal project.
A beard bonanza should allow that sort of ambition. These are fictional beard personalities, drawn as props rather than borrowed from photographs of real people. Nobody here has had their face recruited into a joke without asking. The imaginary beards have agreed to the brief, although one has requested a larger brief.
There really are categories
Before inventing a ridiculous classification system, it is worth checking whether somebody already has a sensible one. The World Beard and Moustache Championships have organized categories and published results. Their 2009 Anchorage results separate moustaches, partial beards and full beards, with names including Verdi, Garibaldi and Freestyle.
The 2025 full beard results include Business Beard and Full Beard Barber Style, alongside natural beard categories divided by length. Those are category names in particular events. They are not instructions for entering the next competition, and we are not about to improve the official rules with a spreadsheet.
Still, “Business Beard” opens a promising door. Does it travel with a laptop bag? Has it prepared a forecast? The actual category does not owe us answers to those questions. Our fictional field guide, unfortunately, does.
The project manager
This beard has a neat outline and a strong opinion about scope. Every hair knows which meeting it belongs in. The moustache maintains a separate calendar because the beard tried combining them once and nobody enjoyed the result.
Viewed from the side, it resembles a small organizational chart. This is reassuring until you discover that the chart contains a dotted reporting line to a sideburn. The sideburn is a contractor.
The project manager beard never says it is finished. It says the current phase is complete. There will be a retrospective after lunch, assuming lunch does not create an incident that requires its own retrospective.
The branch collector
The branch collector began with one simple direction. Then another direction looked interesting. Then the second direction developed a promising offshoot. At this point the beard is less an outline than a conversation about why all the outlines are still necessary.
In our drawing, little curls turn away from the main shape as if each has discovered a more elegant solution. None is ready to merge. The central beard insists that everything is perfectly manageable if you understand the naming convention.
Ask which curl is current and the owner points at three. One is current for the left side, one is waiting on feedback, and one is the version shown to a friend because it photographs better. The friend has already sent that photograph to everyone.
The architect
The architect beard makes a compelling silhouette. There is a central structure, a pair of sweeping supports and an area that appears to have been reserved for future development. You would like to know how it works. You would also like to know whether it fits through a doorway.
It has the confidence of a building shown before the furniture arrives. Every line looks deliberate. If one curl does something unexpected, that curl becomes a feature of the design.
There is nothing wrong with ambition. The fun starts when the explanation becomes bigger than the object. An imaginary architect beard can require a presentation before anyone is allowed to say it resembles a small suspension bridge. A college mascot with an elaborate identity knows that problem well: the story behind the shape does not control what the audience sees.
The weekend prototype
The weekend prototype was going to be a quick experiment. Its owner had a little spare time and wanted to see whether an idea worked. That is how the experiment was described three weekends ago.
One side has been carefully finished. The other side still contains the evidence. The gap between them is called an intentional contrast, partly because calling it a gap would invite follow-up questions.
This beard has an excellent future. You can tell because its owner spends most of the conversation describing it. The present version has a few rough edges, but those will be addressed after the exciting new shape is tried.
The prototype is the easiest beard to sympathize with. It has not made a false promise of completeness. It has simply misplaced the original definition of a weekend. Many perfectly respectable projects have done the same thing.
The quiet veteran
The quiet veteran has seen several trends arrive, announce that they are permanent and leave. It does not object to a new curl. It waits to see whether the curl is still here when the weather changes.
Its outline is less dramatic than the architect’s, but its owner can explain it without opening a document. That is a serious advantage. The explanation is usually that this is the shape the owner likes.
In a group photograph of imaginary beards, the quiet veteran would stand near the edge. The project manager would try to organize the photograph, the architect would need a wider frame, and the branch collector would be in several slightly different versions of it.
The judging meeting nobody requested
These categories are jokes, so there is no winner. Giving them points would only encourage the project manager to ask how the points were weighted. Then the meeting would need another hour.
The useful thing about an exaggerated shape is that it can turn a familiar habit into something visible. Our social media machines use the same trick with noticeboards and tiny stages. Here the fictional beard does the work that a room full of explanatory arrows would otherwise have to do.
Real competition categories deserve their actual definitions. Real people get to choose how they look. Our cardboard beards only need to remain upright long enough for the illustration. The architect has submitted a proposal for a more ambitious stand.