by Tim Girvin | Interior Design, Places, Retail | Oct 13, 2022
2001: A Space Odyssey IN 1968, I WAS FIRST STRUCK BY THE NOTION OF INTEGRATED DESIGN. I WAS 15. When I think about powerful moments of design discovery, it was likely Stanley Kubrick’s film, 2001: A Space Odyssey that taught me about the idea of thematic consistency,...
by GirvinIT | Cool People, Designers, Interior Design, Places, Storytelling | Aug 18, 2022
IN THE HISTORY OF A PRACTICE THAT HAS OPERATED CONTINUOUSLY FOR NEARLY 50 YEARS—SINCE OUR FOUNDING IN 1976—THERE MUST HAVE BEEN A LOT OF DIFFERENT STUDIOS, RIGHT? YES, MANY. AND MANY MOVES. That comes out to the following sequence, setting workplaces @ The Evergreen...
by Tim Girvin | BRAND MYSTICISM, Brands, Places | Jul 13, 2022
THE ORDER OF PATHWAYS AND THE TOUCH OF THE MEMORABLE M A K E A M A Z E M E N T. As brand designers—as with any part of human creativity, “a making” or the construction of a visible object, the made art or the scribed breath of a poem—the point would be to answer this...
by Tim Girvin | Brands, Places | Jun 10, 2022
M A K E Y O U R W A Y S BRAND SPACE—THE STRATEGY OF MAKING—STORYTELLING, PLACE-MAKING, THE PERSONAL JOURNEY OF THE WORK—WHAT YOU MAKE AND THE WAY YOU MAKE IT. Isn’t it so that our journey—as creatives, designers, wordsmiths, strategists—is a stride towards finding?...
by Tim Girvin | Concepts, Places, Trends | Feb 10, 2022
MEDITATIONS ON REMOTE WORK. THE SEARCH FOR MEANINGFUL BEAUTY, THE QUEST FOR ACTIVE FOCUS IN ATTENTION AND THE CONTEMPLATIVE STRATEGY OF WORKING IN REMOTE LOCATIONS—SO-CALLED: WORKING SOMEPLACE YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE. An old scrap of handmade paper, hanging in a...
by Tim Girvin | BRAND MYSTICISM, Brands, Concepts, Cool People, Designers, Interior Design, Luxury, Places, Retail | Feb 7, 2022
HERITAGE BRAND DESIGN AND SYSTEMIC PATTERNING More than four and a half decades ago, 1976, I pitched the idea of integrative branding to the Creative Director at Nordstrom, Dan Holland, and I presented again—this same thematic strategy, later to Claudia Milne, then...
by Tim Girvin | Brands, Cool People, Designers, Places, Storytelling | Jan 28, 2022
WORKING IMAGINATION | THE IMAGINEERS AT DISNEYLAND In my history as a design leader, we worked around various propositions of entertainment at Disney—not only working on films, but Disneyland itself, in a string of calls from the Imagineering teams at Disney,...
by Tim Girvin | BRAND MYSTICISM, Concepts, Places, Retail, Storytelling | Dec 1, 2021
IN THE JOURNEY OF BRAND DESIGN, IT ALWAYS COMES DOWN TO MEANING, MEMORY AND SENSATION. We’ve been working around the brand frontline for 4.5 decades. There are a string of alignments that emanate from that succession that are the core questions that always come to...
by Tim Girvin | BRAND MYSTICISM, Brands, Concepts, Cool People, Human brands, Interior Design, Places, Retail | Nov 5, 2021
TOUCH ME MORE OFTEN. When you circulate, out exploring things—places, brands, natural experiences in the outdoors—what do you do? How do you explore? Me? I’m a touchy-feely kind of a person—I like to touch things, which is inherent in the character of my work, since I...
by Tim Girvin | BRAND MYSTICISM, Designers, Places, Retail, Storytelling | Oct 27, 2021
When you think about a place— what aspects are the most memorable? From my view: patterns, there are patterns that intertwine in the experience of a place that become distinctly memorable. That can speak to unique uses of materials—as in the gnarly grizzle of the...
