Seeing stories in Brands, Design and Gesture.
As a leader of workshops, and team-related branding sessions,
I tend to watch my teams very carefully.
My last blog spoke to listening, and appreciative observation— how to study the evidences of emotion in the gestures of experiencers’ body language— how awake are your participants—and what’s happening with their hands?
The hands are telegraphers of meaning, message and the implications of thought—together, they speak to a moment’s contemplation; they point to approaches, they grasp ideas—as a reach-out to the potential inspiration, they show grace, flow and fluency; they signal tension and anger, splayed—an instance of surprise; the point to a stop, a halting gesture; and they reach out to a calling, a come hither. In reaching another—a handshake could be a statement of strength—and rightly maneuvered, it could be a secret exchange, a hidden grasp and message. And, in a game, cards well-played—the movement of the shuffled deck, the deal laid, the card slide to the dealer, each bespeaks a confidence in the placement. With a pointed figure—literally, the staccato of the expression is emphatic, it’s literally: the point.
My mother and I used to watch people, studying their gestures, and—in this kind of shared trial—she’d ask: “what are they talking about, looking at their hands, what’s being said?”
“See those people over there,
what are they doing,
what do you think?”
Of course, we’d share and offer theories.
“I think they’re calm, they’re comfortable, they’re talking about… I think they’re happy…I think they’re angry…”
But what that exploration—and conversations—really taught me is about hands, handedness and gesture. While someone’s talking, they wring, whirl figurations, they draw in the air – point at things, point at each other — point as in piercing the earth. They make a point. And the other approach was thinking about hands as punctuational devices. They mark sentences, the draft the swirl of storytelling. I learned to watch people talking to me, and what are their hands doing while they’re talking to me.
Of course, other physical linguistics attach themselves to any conversing—as I’d noted in the last blog: are they leaning-in, or leaning-away? Is their head tilting in a querying cant? Or are they looking straight ahead? Standing erect, slouching, arms holding the body up? Akimbo? Hands pocketed or clasping—what?
To each: a clue in attention.
But aside from the eyes and face, the hands tell much and these gestures have power to detail deep mysteries and storytelling. In the western sculptural traditions, the hands tell much.
Walking the galleries at the MET, NYC, or the corridors of Firenze—pathways in Le Louvre, Paris—photographing and studying Renaissance hands, for example, there are hands that wind together as woven raconteurs of a personal telling, single hands that reference one direction of narration, or belie a deeper allegory of an archetypal theme–which could be: learn from me, go there, see there, attention please, look at me, see them, take this from me, gift or challenge, gauntlet or open hand, gestures tell stories.
I look at these — this simple gathering and I think of questioning.
In my college years I studied Medieval art, architecture and culture—the key question would be: “how does the implications of culture find expression in art, design, architecture and uses of writing?” And in that–I studied hands—again the question: “what is that story here, what’s being said in this image of a person, and the careful placement of their hands?”
A great deal,
it would seem.
Codes, secrecy, hidden meanings,
even alphabet mysticism.
In the meditation on the work of strategy, design and brand, what could that mean? It could mean—in the outreach of a brand, the tendrils of its expression—what are the gestures of its narration? Brands tell stories and one could think of them as a kind of physical embodiment—which reaches out with its own hands. This would be the attributes of personality—toughened character, touching, caring, warmth, retraction and recession, willingness and outreach, all in part of the code, the brand coding of experientiality. There is a place, it has a story and it reaches out and touches you—and you, the listener, the experiencer, touches back.
As many know of the character of my observations, I reach in, farther, looking at the framing of context and meaning.
I look at, as a brand strategist and designer, what we do, what we say, and why.
And, going forward we go back—what will be, already was—what could be, has been.
That brings me to another deepening of exploration inside brand, design, meaning and memory. What if there was a brandcode®, what if there was a handcode?
Gesture in yet another context—the mūdra: a system of gestures.
When I was in college, later years, I studied Tibetan Buddhism, particularly Himalayan iconography— what of all of these complex Gods, Goddesses, Demons and Angels, what are they, what are their signs and symbols?
Many and complex would be an understatement. As many know, I drew them.
Traveling in Tibet and Bhutan, you can learn something, but there is plenty that is forgotten. And there is much in those craggy monasteries and nunneries to a lifetime of study.
And there, too, I found hands.
But they have gestures too.
What of these?
I was curious to learn more—to read them,
so I made a book of them.
And that, as in an earlier essay, is a way into
thinking design, journaling journey.
The book?
M Ū D R A
Studying these manual symbolisms, each gesture, a notation. I drew them all.
Vajra Hasye Mudra [see pg..633]
Surely, there are plenty of additional gestures for study—100s, actually. But core to my examination is the idea of the read — watching the hand.
To the allegory of the hand, the gesticulation of storytelling, the tell, the card well-played, the drafting notations of the staccato of manual punctuation, it comes down to this:
the hand speaks.
There is a reach-out, a handshake, a wave, jab a poke— a point—and as the digits realign, they share the nature of the narrative.
IMAGINE EACH OF THESE—
WHAT WOULD THEY BE?
Hey you!
Look here!
This is important!
Louder?
Quiet…please
Come!
Leave!
Look there!
Look out, look in.
Get out there.
Go further.
What’s the point?
Hear with the eyes, see with the hands.
GIRVIN | Waterfront studios
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Girvin Cloudmind
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