by Tim Girvin | Brands, Concepts | Oct 7, 2014
In the game of games, resilience, strength, perception matter. So too in brands. To the allegory of sports, as a gamesman, I tend to contemplate allegory, conceptual alignments, metaphors. Think poetry. Flow. Focus. Speed. Strength. Perception. Flow: In the grace of...
by Tim Girvin | Brands, Concepts, Retail, Trends | Sep 30, 2014
Brands, Logos, Communities Being in the business of design, and with a long history of work in the translation of the storytelling of brands into graphical interpretations, the logotype is at the center of brand style. And while there might be many layers of...
by Tim Girvin | Brands, Interior Design, Places, Retail | Sep 22, 2014
Exploring Retail Architecture, Metaphor and Magic. I had a chance to observe the strategic evolutions of Nordstrom’s brand presence in my friendship with Dawn A. Clark, AIA LeedAP — lead architectural strategist and team leader in the newly evolving architectural and...
by Tim Girvin | Brands, Concepts, Storytelling | Sep 9, 2014
Brands That Have Nothing To Say. As a designer, I think about layers. And I think about messages. Content. Holism. Contentment. Direction. There is a sign, but it’s empty. It has nothing to say, no place that it points. It’s nowhere. Like experiences that move from a...
by Tim Girvin | Brands, Concepts, Retail | Sep 3, 2014
Brand Medicine, 101. In our history, there are times when brand, their organic systems, begin to falter. — They don’t speak to a community, or they forgot who they were talking to, what they were relating, carrying a story and a product to a certain audience. As in...
by Tim Girvin | Brands, Cool People, Retail | Aug 19, 2014
PRODUCT STRATEGY, INDUSTRIAL DESIGN, FASHION, AND THEIR INTERTWINEMENT I was thinking about my relationship with the micro-camera, which — for years, that was a folio of 10s of 1,000s of photographs. After clearing out my files, and reducing the collections, I’m still...
by Tim Girvin | Brands, Concepts, Storytelling | Jul 24, 2014
The Fire of Brand: Is there a story, in a story, in a dream, in another telling? Years ago I was talking to a innovations forum, a large confederated brand team at Procter & Gamble about the layering of brand, in story — this was downtown Cincinnati, Building One...
by Tim Girvin | Brands, Concepts | Jul 8, 2014
Studying the journey of brand, and those that gather around them. How close in are you? You say you know, but is that just you? Or others? I was working with a team in Texas, and we were talking about modeling brand relationships — how does a brand team synchronize...
by Tim Girvin | Brands, Concepts, Places, Retail, Scent | Jul 1, 2014
Designing a Pathway of Personality, Fragrance and Their Retail Perfume Portal. In a note forwarded by retail strategist and architect, Dawn A. Clark, she notes Selfridges’ newest innovation — a Perfume Laboratory [Videolink]. As has been pointed out by many,...
by Tim Girvin | Brands, Concepts | Jun 24, 2014
The Outlook, the Lookout and Looking Out And looking in, to Brand Experience Design. As designers, we’re looking in, and looking out. And in our experience with brand management, it’s never, alone, only the looking in — the insights of inner seeing. But too, it’s the...
