THE SCENT OF PLACE: ISTANBUL
THE SMELL OF EXPERIENCE: THE HISTORY OF EMPIRE & THE DESIGN OF SENSATION I was talking to a friend and client about the notion of brand in sensationalism — the holism of experience strategy. That comes down to one point, a reflexive point — how big do you feel? We...
Create More Beauty
The Principle of the Search: More Beauty [Photo: Dawn A. Clark, AIA Leed AP] In our life journey, as creatives — people that create — we listen, absorb, gather, interpret and make meaning. We work to import and deliver content in a manner that is compelling to a...
ATTENTIONALITY
HOW ATTENTIVE ARE YOU? As you think about design, and the creation of designed experiences, the point might go two ways: how attentive are you? and how attentively will your experiences be received? People come into a place in the construct of impressionistic...
Arts and Leisure?
Isn’t art work? There’s an interesting proposition that art, aligned with leisure, is something relaxing and “easy.” I might offer that the making of art, the impassioned creativity, is never something easy. But instead, with the exception of those in the throes of...
Ebola and Rebranding
EBOLA AND BRANDING OR REBRANDING. I was talking to a GIRVIN colleague about the CDC’s management of the Ebola viral spread — from Africa, now stateside. That might be a question to rebranding [the CDC — to reliability,] as well. We’d talked about the legacy of their...
Brand and Mind
3M: Memory, Mental and Meaning. Sometimes we push a proposition in our work on brandspace that fails to take into consideration the bridging to a human scenario of mindfulness, meaning and the context of memory. All are — as would be obvious — aligned. But the notion...
Written Talismans and Architecture
The Use of Writing as a Talismanic Device in Architecture When GIRVIN had an office in NYC, off 26th and Broadway, I used to walk around, looking in on shops and restaurants. I found a little curiosity shop, a dealer in ancient antiquities and I spied some familiar...
The Mystery of Design
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...
What could you give?
Brands that give, brands that don’t. I was studying this wall-bound piece of type, and contemplated the unassuming air of its drawing — nothing too formal — outlined then in-filled in a casual, if not happily energetic manner. In the emotionality of typography, the...
The Symbolism of the Hash Tag
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...