The Strategy and Design of Mystically-Inspired Brands
In our history, we’ve had a string of opportunities to
collaborate with brand partners who are different in their visioning of their enterprises—
rather than focusing, for typical partners, on the notion of “how we’re going to make money,”
but rather, how “our brand will be deeper, it will be a stronger, even psychical frame of meaning.”
These could be brands of healing recovery, training,
wellness-making, health-related training,
even merchandising or retail propositions.
Hum, for example.
This began as a one on one conversation—a discovery session with foundress and visionary, Sarah de Joybert—in a hotel lobby in Toronto with a woman that I knew earlier, while she was an executive at L’Oréal—I’d participated in brand conceptual discussions with her in Manhattan. And even then, the framing of her inquiry spoke to a deeper and more intentioned approach to brand thinking, brand evolutions and deployment. She was different. Is different.
The point to her work was bringing
yoga into a home practice modality.
The HUM symbol is its own mystical monogram—a kind of entwined inhalation and exhalation,
just like a yoga pose: breathe in, breathe out.
But, to the notion of a deeper expression—the spiritual depth of her commitment and brand—
we walked into the mantra,
the breath exhalation—hum, the mantra
as a syllable from a longer exhalation.
So, as a common opening attachment to Hum is a phrase comprised of two Sanskrit words. The literal translations are: So: “That.” And Hum: “I.”It could be suggested that the translation of So Hum is “I Am That.” Vedic scholars have interpreted the “That” in the mantra to represent the Universe, and understood that the So Hum mantra symbolizes the fact that we are all connected to the universal energy that is constantly supporting and nourishing us in the ways we need and desire. It plays into the same concept as “oneness,” or “I am one with the Universe and all of creation.”
We designed product, founded on this proposition
in a series of complex brand patterning.
A pattern language—all of which cosmical, mandala-esque, embedded sacred geometry.
To the common observer—it’s attractive. To the deeper explorer—it’s meaningful.
That’s emboldening a narrative
of deeper spirituality.
Brandspirit.
This idea of embedding layers of meaning into deep brand presentation could be found in perfume, our work with fragrance strategist and designer alchemist, Christi Meshell and her divine feminist brand mystery in House of Matriarch. As a graphice principium, there is a substrate used throughout in the flower of life geometry—the overlapping circles or Metatron’s cube—and later Fibonacci’s interpretations of the golden section.
Even Leonardo da Vinci drafted his renderings of this form.
Leonardo da Vinci | Codex Atlanticus fol. 309v
To understand its implications, we drew it.
And then we used it as a substrate graphical architecture—a symbolic embedment
of ideals and the alchemical mystery of Christi’s work.
In another brand development—a form of more Christian mysticism, we examined a string of books in the Rare Book Library at GIRVIN, seeking out the Emblemata—
16th and 17th collections of Christian oriented sigils and phenomena, allegorical illustrations of Christian ideals in the development of a prototypical collection, in our collaborations with a former GIRVIN employee and who later became a marketing director for Nordstrom label brand, Façonnable.
We applied this thinking to a line of garments.
A calligraphic patterning for scarves and garment lining.
The nature of these two brand propositions, and their intertwinement, mystical and spiritual,
are not far from the understory of conventional brand strategy. While either of them are regarded as “taboo” in the business world—they’re not as far-fetched as one might presume. To the first analysis—mystical is derived from an Ancient Greek word, mystes, an initiate.
And in a manner, you might suggest, as a brand strategist, that in the nature of brand relationship, in the legacy of community narratives and sharing—the process is really about who knows—“who’s an insider?” To a brand recognition, who grasps the story, who—as present—is connected to the inside, the heart, the relevance, the resonance of the brand in their relationship with it?
Brand spirit-ualism—again, in ancient linguistics, Greek then Latin—spiritu, then spiritus is “breath.”
And, to brand-related allegories, one might proffer that inspiration—is the inhalation—the breath of the inspired, the oxygenated high.
As ever, the thinking of 2000 years ago, finds a place in the tactics of the now.
Tim GIRVIN | Strategic Brands
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