Brand symbolism
When you look, you find. In working on a brand development project in eastern Washington, I was walking their vineyard to get, literally, the lay of the land. And, I'm looking for what lies beneath, what lies inside the brand story. And in any brand development, it's...
Marc Jacobs
------------------------- NOTES ON: Marc Jacobs The key to influence is the street. Marc's work is based on his ascent -- and that's telling. It tells the tales of his visioning, drawn from experience starting from the ground up. From his opening efforts at...
John Larson NBC Kiva Story
Hi and good morning. Starting off, after the absence of Labor...day. Welcome back! ---- Here's a story about a story. The thing that I believe in, personally, is that it's sometimes hard to imagine that small things really matter -- but they do. And in a way,...
Spirit light painting
I realized that the branding visualizations that Sprint's been doing with conductor-like expressions of people moving things, ideas, teams, etc., with light, was strangely reminiscent of something in my mind -- not sure what, but it's there. Something. And what I'd...
The cartography of language and meaning
Visual Thesaurus visualizations, brand development and GIRVIN. ---- As a designer, and someone that works in the space of branding and the human character of business communications, writing plays a significant role. Moreover, there's the issue of how people...
TypeCon 2007
When someone gets something -- understands a message, how is it gathered, how is it understood? The lay of the alphabet, the geometries therein, speak to the message of the mind, laid bare, in the character of the black on the white, the message -- missive -- quickly...
Death of Luxury
There are some that believe that luxury's rocking - it's just one big booming affair. But where in the world is it rocking? There are others, particularly more fluent to the history and movement of luxury brand(s) in Asia that see a potential turning that might...
Beowulf: the movie
Beowulf What calls, from ancient halls, the spirit of that other distant world, far more than a thousand and five hundred years back in the balled skein of time? Beowulf! Palaeography, or the history of the written world has long been a strategic underpinning of what...
Clodagh
I'd met with Clodagh in the 80s. She was starting, I was starting.
Matt Groening
Matt Groening & Tim Girvin: Cartooned life Meditations on careers, creative and titles. I met Matt Groening first at TED, 2007. More often than not, people have said that the big connection that I have with college is cartooning. "Hey, you're from the same school...