LAYERING MESSAGES AND IMAGERY IN BRAND WORKSHOPPING.
THE CARTOGRAPHY OF BRANDSCAPE
(Digital Brush work)
MAPPING BRAND THINKING | Part two
THE DOODLING OF IDEAS, PATHWAYS OF EXPLORATION SCRIBBLED,
BRAND MAPPING AND DOCUMENTATION:
Brandquesting®, brand navigation and creative brand business applications for the iPad.
People fire brands—brands are created by people for people—and engaging people in the process of understanding brands, building them, expanding their strategies is a foundation for how we work.
That principle isn’t uncommon—it’s sensible—it’s sensually-focused, sense and feeling count for wholeness; but it’s in the how that can make a difference. How does one find that sensation[alism?]
That can be evidenced in how it’s approached—
how do you gather the content, insights, path-development?
Drawing a breath inhaled, feeling it, drawing it out: drawn-in, drawn-out.
Drawing creates a sinuous threading that snaps a vital code of meaning.
For the draftsperson—it’s alive. It’s not typed out, it’s scribed—it’s alive.
There’s a difference in the grasp of the interpretations.
In my experience, and others at GIRVIN, this drafting methodology—to work notes and note-taking as a cartographic exercise: mapping, navigating—charting another realm, a new world, a refreshed pathway. It’s a faster form of inhalation of insights, as well as the exhalation of solutions—they’ve been drawn-out, literally.
Collaboration counts in the ideation, but it counts more in the utilization and reference to how this is integrated not only for the team building and engagement, but as well in the celebration of final outcomes. Working with people in listening to challenges, formulating paths, exploring the stepping stones of those pathways and building definable and recognizable results is part of how that processing works—draw live, draw extemporaneously—render live, on the spot. The more engagement, the more enchantment will be found in the outcome.
Without enchantment — there is rarely engagement.
Working with teams, customers, communities interactively—voices are heard, fingers touch ideas, ideals are explored, inspirations are gathered and advancements are energized.
Dreams activate.
It all comes down to the people—but as well, the documentation of process, gathering and savoring connections between people — learning from relationships, digging into community. Push further. And making choices of path. Brands have to go somewhere, speak a language, reflect a point of view, offer relevance, have a soul—and for the sake of survival, they need to have a sense of direction.
But the realm of the brand surely isn’t flat, it’s not a piece of paper with principles and guidelines—it’s a state of being. And being is a human state, it’s the nature of our evolving condition to be perpetually studying the horizon—what lies next, where to go, what will the conditions of that direction be? Brands and people, go together.
To the thinking—drawing it out—on the nature of crowdweaving: building and exploring the ideas of teams, crowds of minds, the nature of examination is highly improvisational—it’s gestural, it’s way-finding, it’s guiding and digging in. And drawing out. That process of working with crowds of people—what we’ve referenced as a kind of cloudmind—presumes a sense of direction, and—pardon, what kind of cloud, size and rain—a breeze that is going in a certain way. While it might be directionally influenced, the nature of flow is changeable—it can go one way, then another—and finally still another.
So, clouds go. And so, crowds go.
We work as interpreters—but also channelers. To the idea of that channeling—drawing, live, working out ideas, images, maps, summaries is something that needs to happen on the fly. Gathered dynamically, it is more spontaneous and accelerated — and speed counts for everything in the short term. It’s not expected—“we are only going here” doesn’t work.
(Paper channeling / brand mapping / creative sketchplay)
BrandQuests®, explorations and strategic adventures go where they need to go. They can be surely mapped, planned as an agenda—but the weather changes. Be prepared for storms, trending waves and windless seas.
We help the ideation with active engagement—looking at drawings, imagery, words, poetry, storytelling, street talk, safaris, hunts, whatever works in the enculturation of the team. Still, drawing and active translation lies at the center of the work. We draw. And we draw it out.
Drawn on stock, drafted on paper can be balanced in the digital: tableted as the iPad, the idea of drawing, gathering ideas and assembling them as integrated expressions is becoming an expansion tool, to explore how on the moment experiences can be documented, shared, evolved.
We experiment with how that session development, the agendas of exploration could be thought of as a mapping—a navigational gathering—the cartography of journey found, voyage run and visioning to future landscapes. This composite of drawing—the idea of team sharing and notations from the experience led examinations towards a kind of overlaid note-taking of ideas—drawn out photography, with notes, laid as an interlacement of exhalation. What came of that relating: the storytelling of the journey—the ability to draw and explore live how that could be seen—ultimately, by many participants in the workshopping.
Scribble. Ideate. Notate. Postulate. Activate.
iPad doodles, notes, photographs, observations, insights >
and outcomes, on the fly — for direction.
There is no answer—think: design.
Design: thinking.
Shock and awe—what if the exploration sparks: s u r p r i s e.
There is always the inevitability of failure—try: fall down.
Get up and go on. A gain.
In the whole body of solution-finding, there will always be wounds.
Heal up: keep rolling—
f o r
w a r d s.
In the quest for the new, the bold, the roll-forward, what could that outcome be?
B E A U T Y
C R O W D
C O N T R O L
A
W A N D E R E R
C O U L D
D R A F T
A N
O T H E R
T E L L I N G
Retail audition / on site—what’s working, what’s not—gathering live,
working in the mix of place and message, visualizations and perceptions.
P R O J E C T & P R O C U R E
Matrix messaging>building and
drawing, live explorations—draft dream.
Session explorations —
notations, live sketch.
(iPhone message mapping)
In the speed of the migrations of thought, the live exploration—the team wandering to the ideal (idea)—charrette leaders, team members need to visualize and capture inspirations—gathered visioning.
A crowded mind, a well-minded crowd, a team interpretation, a journey and exploration—the journey, the journal, they intertwine. The mind is a cauldron, there are storms, sparks, lightning strikes, winds and currents and showers of brilliance — whether one, or many — the surge and the whirlwind but there will need to be the interpreter, the gatherer, the assembler, the draftsman. There will be a point when the brilliance reaches an apex, a fulcrum, some new marvelment.
Drawing that — live — can transform breath, thoughts, surprise into action.
One thought, gestured, catalyzes.
TIM | Seattle waterfront
GIRVIN | MEDITATIONS ON INNOVATIONS:
BRAND FIRE, MR. JOBS & APPLE
DESIGNING IMAGINATION : AND THE TOOLS TO MAKE IT HAPPEN