The ring of being | Designing sensation
The Context of Holistic Branding, Experience Design and the Person Earlier, in NYC, I was talking to an Aikido master about sensation -- and the sphere of awareness. It might be suggested that Aikido -- a "way of ki," is more about finding the divinity of an opponent,...
Happy Mother's Day
The Mothering of The Mother In my journey, I've studied the creative molding process as a man driven and bidden by the magicspell of making. In college, the 70s, I read Erich Neumann's monumental undertaking "The Great Mother" which was published two years after I was...
Deep Smoke
The Design of Fragrances From The Forest Sometimes, it's a ritual. A gathering of clans, spirits, prayers and reaching to another place, the plane of the unseen. Sometimes, it's just fire, smoke and the vapors of translation -- from woods and grasses and rotted roots...
What could be worse?
There are bad signs, and then there are worse signs. In the journey of a designer of signing and related environmental graphics -- the core point of the design strategy is storytelling -- the story might be: this is the place; go here, do not go here, you are here,...
THE LEAVES OF A BOOK, THE TREES OF LEAVES
THE FOLIAGE OF THE ALPHABET AS THE DEEPER HEART OF WISDOM Perhaps universal history is the history of the diverse intonations of a few metaphors. - Jorge Luis Borges, “Pascal’s Sphere,” 1951 I've drawn a word a day on leaves, thinking: each word, as a work of time, is...
SAY YES
The journey of the answer. Anytime you have an answer, there was a question before. And any question is a quest -- it's a journey, from one place of comprehension, the grip of knowing, to the pathway to a step of insight. And in that in sight, you see in. I ponder the...
THE LIGHT BEHIND THE TREES
THE SOULFUL BRAND There is a proposition that a brand can have soul. That a brand, as a presence built by humans, can have a warmth of intention. Intention is the grasp, literally, to stretch out. What does the reach of a brand re-present? Any brand starts with an...
The Illustration of Ideas, the Letter form as a Magical Device
When you draw a letter, what happens? A drawing is a drawing out; draw a letter, the string of story unspools and it's something more. A letter is a map, an anciently originated succession of markings, a thought cartography, a seared, scarred, scratched, penned,...
The JOURNEY OF SPICE & PERFUME
THE LAYERING OF EXPERIENTIAL DESIGN PRINCIPLES OF THE TRANS-SENSATIONAL EXPERIENCE: LAYERING STORY, TASTE, TOUCH, SCENT AND THE HEARING OF THE WHOLE BEING. WORKING in Oregon, I met with a taste innovation strategist -- a woman who, along with my team, as well as a...
Mystical Brands
Brandspirit and the building of spiritual and mystical brands What is the shadow brand, and what is the brand of light? For a long time, it's been said -- "you can't use that word 'spiritual' around business people, it will scare them off. Use 'mystical' -- get outta...