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...
by Tim Girvin | Brands, Concepts, Scent, Storytelling | Jun 17, 2014
Anytime? In the work of brand, are you ever off, or always on? I was walking this remote road, and I found this sign in the middle of anywhere, no where — “ANYTIME.” When I find signs like this, I’m prone to ponder their meaning — as if...
by Tim Girvin | Brands, Concepts, Storytelling | Jun 12, 2014
Looking at the dark side of brand, their strategies, and their stories. In the work of finding the heart and soul space of a team of entrepreneurs, their creation, a brand and the story of their telling — community and relationships — sometimes a darker...
