The Icon of You
Personal Brands, Totems and Emblems Why does Tim Girvin love crows and ravens? It was just posted, again — a group of images on crows and ravens tagged “for Tim Girvin.” While that was happening, that posting, I was looking at an entity that was clearly looking at me...
The Aesthetics of Aging
The Beauty of Rust Antiquity, Utility, Wabi Sabi and Beauty In one person’s eyes, as an object gets older, it cracks, it discolors — and it might rust. Okay, one approach — toss it out. Get rid of it. And contrary to that — another more classical line of thinking:...
The Design of Shadows
DESIGNING THE SHADOW WORLD What Have You Seen of the Shadow World? In any journey, the question is never just what is on the surface, but what lies behind and beneath. It’s never about what you see in clarity alone, but what lies behind the Light. And what the Light...
All that Wander
ALL THAT WANDER SHALL BE FOUND The Quest for Metaphor, Personal Symbolism and the Iconography of Journey IN THE WORK ON BRAND, the questing strategist invariably finds that — besides the fundamentals of commerce — there are deeper values to the work: there is a...
Movie Titling / Hand Craft
Working from Scratch: Customized Type Face Design, Font Development and Motion Picture Design The presumption is — design by hand and the work is better. Is that right? In the study of aligning idea to shining, brand to epiphany, inspiration to magic — there is the...
WE MADE IT HERE
Care, Craft and Centrality in the Value of Place in Authentic Making Earlier, working in, and writing about, luxury, I’d talked about truth — the deadly virus of pompous positioning of luxury goods. “Yes, fancy surely, but we actually had it made in China on the...
Brand Storytelling | The Labyrinth of Layering Content, Meaning and Message
The cartography of brandfire: the story of highest road, the path of the middle story told, and the cumulus of the multiple tales — the grounding ley-line of the promise — the mission of the everyday. I’d offer a theory of the narrative cloud — the stories that...
RUIN PORN — What Did You Do Now?
The Beauty of Ruination — the Quest for Damage The fascination with ruins. The beauty of that which was. When one hears that phrase, “brand new” it usually implies that which is bright and shiny — freshly made, just out of the mould. I tend not to have much interest...
TEXTUALITY: THE WEAVING OF THE ALPHABET
Designing Alphabets, Messaging and Meaning. The alphabetic coding of “The Matrix.” The metaphors of threading content, digital rain, flow and the loom of meaning in context I was talking to a team of students from my college days, reteaching, again some of the...
The Truth of Luxury
THE LUXURY OF AUTHENTIC BRANDS Love counts in the practice of making true. The heart of the genuine: exploring the concepts of authenticity, history, brands and the place of luxury. I’d open with the meaning — and the combinational character of the idea of truth and...