by Tim Girvin | Artists, Concepts, Designers, Storytelling | Dec 4, 2014
Design Mysticism When you go deep. As a designer, you might meditate on your work, what you’re doing. And your being in that doing. There might be a brand strategy, and the unfolding character of tactics and deployment. But making marks is a legacy that is thousands...
by Tim Girvin | Brands, Concepts, Storytelling, Trends | Nov 20, 2014
The Hatching Stroke and the Ubiquity of Archetypal Design Thinking # I was walking the beach near my studios and found the above mark, cross-hacked into a log, the proverbial “pound” or number sign. And I wondered about it. “When this type of mark is made, what...
by Tim Girvin | Concepts, Retail, Storytelling | Nov 11, 2014
The Script of The Multi-Stroke Brush Lettering Old-style Grocery Signage Script When I began my career [1975,] I was a lettering artist, a sign-writer. I wasn’t a designer, I was more to a kind of tradesman. I had no idea about what design was, per se — I knew about...
by Tim Girvin | Brands, Concepts, Storytelling | Nov 6, 2014
Can you fight? Perhaps you’ve had some exposure to boxing? You know what comes of it. The movement is a dance — it’s a whirling and spinning spar — a jumping and explosive hip hop to reach out in a ring, ‘round you. All of the training is about speed and stamina —...
by Tim Girvin | Brands, Concepts, Storytelling | Oct 28, 2014
There is a sign, and beneath that sign is another sign. Brands and palimpsest, the layers of content. When I was working in Paris, I marveled at the old shopfronts and the signing on signing — a new sign, on an old sign. You’ve seen them in your town. An old sign...
by Tim Girvin | Concepts, Storytelling | Oct 21, 2014
The Signature of Your Presence You have style. Sure, there are your clothes. Your shoes. Your hair Your house, your apartment, your car — and the summary of your brand relationships. Then there is the style of you. Who are you — what do you stand for? What do you care...
by Tim Girvin | Brands, Concepts, Storytelling | Oct 9, 2014
Who are you, anyway? In several recent conversations with client companies, there has been a gesture to a kind of invention — like: “make me something I’m not.” “trying to look, speak, sound and feel like something” else. “I don’t like how we look.”...
by Tim Girvin | Concepts, Cool People, Designers, Interior Design, Places, Storytelling | Oct 2, 2014
The Journey of Design, Place-making and Creative Environments: Archetypal Signage As any designer knows, to brand and experience design, there is a link between storytelling and sequence. A story has an ingress — a start, a mid-point, a moment of spectacle, of...
by Tim Girvin | Concepts, Places, Storytelling | Sep 25, 2014
There is the sign, which is a way — a tool to explain process and direction, to instruct, to mark, to place: made. The Ace Hotel, Expressed Metal Plate But to the notion of place-making, how that sign is made, gesture or stone, or cut metal, wood can tell a layering...
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...
