The Draft of Horror
Designing Identities for Scary Storytelling | Gruesome Design for Films I was talking to a young aficionado of typography and the lettering arts, as well as a connoisseur of scary movies, and we talked about logos for horror movies. And, to quote, “why is that...
The Layers of Meaning
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...
The Seeing Hand
And the Emotions of The Skin The realm of touch and brand holism. There are people that talk about their 360º branding experience. I talk to them, walk a ways with them. And watch. When you think about brand experience, the query point will be what feeling does the...
What is your style?
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...
The Script of Being
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." "I don’t like our...
Is your brand athletic?
In the game of games, resilience, strength, perception matter. So too in brands. To the allegory of sports, as a gamesman, I tend to contemplate allegory, conceptual alignments, metaphors. Think poetry. Flow. Focus. Speed. Strength. Perception. Flow: In the grace of...
Symbolic Interiors: Designing Talismans For A Place
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...
Logomania
Brands, Logos, Communities Being in the business of design, and with a long history of work in the translation of the storytelling of brands into graphical interpretations, the logotype is at the center of brand style. And while there might be many layers of...
The Sign | A Meditation on a Journey in Storytelling
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...
The First International Nordstrom Store | Calgary
Exploring Retail Architecture, Metaphor and Magic. I had a chance to observe the strategic evolutions of Nordstrom’s brand presence in my friendship with Dawn A. Clark, AIA LeedAP — lead architectural strategist and team leader in the newly evolving architectural and...