Seeds of Compassion | His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama in Seattle
It started here, http://blog.girvin.com/?p=576, for me, but, there is history: It goes back. And I go back. I can remember the first time that I was exposed to a Tibetan vajrayana teaching presence -- a human distillation of Himalayan spirituality. It was Sogyal...
©Murakami | Notes on the arts & crafts movement of the present era
Exploring the principles of art, craft, making and the philosophical vision: Brooklyn Museum: http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/murakami/ What about Takashi Murakami? "the difference inherent in Japanese and Western artistic practices, and the frustrating...
Oakley | Branded environments, architecture & brand storytelling
An examination of conceptions of branding environments for storytelling in contextual community. Case study: Oakley. American Hurrah | Oakley Girvin backgrounder: I believe that people understand brand comprehensively in place. Over the last 20 years, Girvin has been...
Exploring the community of scent | Sniffapalooza
The power of two, of community, relationships in development -- and the world of fragrance. I've written about scent -- working in that brandspace, contemplating the spirit of fragrance in the worlds of commerce, personality, travel, integrated marketing experience...
The Dark Force | The Return of Myth in Brand Design
Exploring the concept of an emerging dark luster in design, it might be more so about the exhausting confusion and difficulties of the present market -- and the swirling chaos of the near future. What's happening now? Is the end nigh? Or night, near? What is wrong...
Buzzing, twittering, twitching | New media community
Buzzing, twittering, twitching: Exploring community development in online new media launches. When I was at TED | Aspen, last month, I found myself in a world of people -- my age and younger, late 30s, 40s, 50s -- who were communicating with each other in interesting,...
Exploring identity: Stop-Loss | Kimberly Peirce
Girvin worked on the identity design for a new Peirce | Paramount Studios + MTV film. Kimberly Peirce is remarkably patient. It's been nearly 10 years since her last effort, "Boys Don't Cry", shown here, in the center, with her stars, Chloë Sevigny and double Oscar®...
Koolhaas | Generic architecture and the spirit of place
Rem Koolhaas A new vision in Dubai is an amalgam of the plain with the bold -- OMA & Rem Koolhaas "Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas revealed his concept of “the generic city,” a sprawling metropolis of repetitive buildings centered on an airport and inhabited by a...
Finding the heart and soul of Starbucks
Store one: Pike Place Market: It's clear that Howard Schultz is loved, given the rousing support he received at the shareholder's conference, this past week in Seattle. Even k.d. lang was there, savoring the melange of several thousand people, singing out. But what's...
Modernism | Decoration and patterning in placemaking
For a number of years, I've been exploring the idea of patterning in design. Patterning in brand, patterning in architecture, patterned treatments in art. That ranges from the idea of using layering -- and pattern -- as a kind of subdued code in branded applications:...