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...
The Weaving of the Alphabet
Designing the Alphabet of the Film, "The Matrix." The metaphors of threading, rain, flow and the loom of meaning in context Working with Warner Brothers, Joel Silver and the Wachowski siblings on "The Matrix" was a highlight in a string of theatrical advertising...
I COULD TOUCH YOU
WHEN I GET CLOSER, I KNOW MORE As I touch something, I can feel inside. Isn't it so, for you, that when you touch something, you know more? In a conversation, touching the person that you're communicating with, adds a series of punctuations and pauses that accentuate...
THE CONCEPT OF RECREATION
WHEN YOU GO BACK, TO A PLACE OF QUIET, IN THAT PAUSE, RE-CREATE. The journey of creativity is an ebb and flow of the fluency of finding the beauty that is right for you, that you could find, discovering -- and that you could make yourself, in your recreation. We start...
What Do You Wonder At?
Wonderment and Wow. I realized that for me, the sense of wow, and the state of wowness, suggests the bridge to wonderment. I've written about wow in the past. Wow is a Scottish word from the 1500s -- and it links to amazement. One might suggest that to be amazed is to...
THE CULT OF CULTURE
THE LEGEND OF CULT AND THE IMPLICATIONS OF CULTURE In an engaged manner, culture appeals most inherently to the idea of cultivation. A metaphor of gardens, flowering and nurturing growth. In the cultural revolution of the world inside brands, the longest shadow from...
I Am the Forest, I Am The Tree
The Clustering of Customers, the Typing of People, From the One to the Many As a veteran of hundreds of hours of focus groups, sessions, store interceptions and onsite consumer reviews, I find a forest, but am I close enough to the tree? I was thinking about this the...
If You Go Somewhere.
Get In There. Get Dirty. Get Deep. Digging Into Experience and Brand Learning. The Strategy of Story, Name, Journey. In every moment, there is a journey. The tiny steps of an instant, make up the chronology of a stride to the cartography of a longer journey, a path...