DRAWN OUT IN BLACK
AND THE ATTENTION TO DETAIL, IN THE SPATTERING OF INSPIRATION.
When I was in college,
I taught workshops to help my payment of the tuition, along with support from my family.
I used variously colored butcher paper to do that —
pulled, ripped out and sheared on a rolling roller of “wrapping paper stock.”
We have this currently, on rollers, to move around the office, for improvisational note-taking
and idea-jotting, thought-mapping.
All photography, this blog,
by Gabrielle Girvin
What I found was that doing banners created a kind of splashy formatting for sharing ideas — like rollable white boards.
Meeting with a friend, recently — we talked about a transformation of a text, to a banner, in support of a very special place — an office wall — above a set of brilliantly-fired Ferrari red file cabinets. I’d pointed out that a strip of red, torn, with spattered black calligraphy, could be a good banner to this idea:
“The difference between mediocrity and excellence is attention to detail.” That’s Sebastian J. Barbarito.
And it’s in the details that the emotional resonance of a design emerges.
One is persistently studying a series of things — but to one, “intention.”
You’re doing something, but why — what is the drive to direction?
What do you, are you, intending?
Intention — and its aligned word, attention, are thematically compelling to me and our teams.
What’s the point — what are you doing and why are you doing it? This, a foundational question — both to the inside messaging — the internal teams, and how these expressions become experiences on the outside.
The words, intend, intention, and the attending to attention. They link to muscle – tendon, and tensility as well as tenet. In intention, as well as attention, there is a principle of “turning in to – turning focus towards.” That relates in a manner to the concept of stiffness, rigor, discipline —
or a “cord” — a string that ties things together.
Thematically, in the grand arc of metaphorical thinking at Girvin,
we think about what lies within,
and what lies beneath, wherefrom — the deeper allegory,
in the poetry of people in story-making and telling,
in many things.
It’s never just the work,
it’s the meaning and the why of it.
When I think about a piece of writing, I flow into that script in
the spell-binding of the story
that lies within —
I consider:
scale,
flow,
spatter and
energy,
drive and
follow-through:
the flourish,
and the finish.
Things get messy.
I’m looking for the energy of that drive-through the literature,
I’m looking to transform, and translate the wafting whisper of ideas, voiced, and now evoked in live writing, marked — there’s a story, a script, a message, and how do you go through it, to the rendering on the other side.
In the end, that journey, like spell-making, binding and casting, sigils and symbolic formula —
the calligraphy of ideas,
mapping in
a cartography of breath, energy, flow.
The red is a thread of blood —
scribed and scratched and overlaid in black —
a set of incantations.
It’s all magic.
Like the college days, the core of my teaching to dozens of students, is
how to make that breath of expression, that meditation, live.
There is the inspiration.
There is the breathing-out,
the washed fluency of ink and blood —
and you move through to the other side,
where it’s not a dream,
but it’s an “acted-on”
principle of movement in the execution of
the best, the ideal — the perfected.
The quote was an item of discussion — and then an artistic drafting for a friend, designer and core creative director at Starbucks, now retired —
and long a point
[Starbucks] of blogging commentary by Girvin.
I watched, I read, I listened, I pondered the dimensions of the place of installation —
then exhaled and drew, fast and without a plan — free-handed, wild and open, wet and full of curiosity about what
might come forth, a surprise in the risk of the wet, the black, the flow, the flung.
Done, gone, and shipped.
What he thinks of the details?
When I think of details, I contemplate, in the thoughtfulness of strategist, and pattern language theorist, Christopher Alexander — who espouses that real human design — the quest for beauty, in the details, will show up for relevance in meaning — in “an eighth of an inch.”
Details.
Detailed.
Detail.
Piece by piece, step by step, en détail.
Tailored, that touch, that moment.
TIM | Pike Place Market
…..
G I R V I N | N E W WOWNESS
INNOVATION WORKSHOPS
CREATING STRATEGIES, PRODUCTS,
IDEAS FOR CHANGE.
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