THE WAKE OF PERFUME, SEX SILLAGE
THE PERFUME THAT FOLLOWS YOU. As you're walking the street, a hallway, a waft of scent flows by. Multiple "perfumes of place" drift -- if you're open, you're scenting them. As well, you're scenting -- the fragrance of you, the trailing scent of you -- it drifts behind...
Sweet Being
A Sense of Place, Design and Experience When I was studying with Reed College's rockstar+poet+calligrapher Lloyd Reynolds, I spent time with him at his home in Portland, talking, exploring and pouring over his enormous library. We'd write out broadsides, walk, talk,...
Storytelling Signing Design: Messaging that Doubles up
The Layers of Intention and Storytelling in the Context of Message and Community As students of environmental design and signing, we're endlessly studying typography and messaging, signing and fabrication -- and, in the end -- placement and meaning. What does the sign...
The Goodness of Truth
It would be better if it was true In the soul-searching of positioning and the right angle of brand, to story, cult and culture and truth in the telling, the woven fabric of brand experience and the personality of that narrative will be far better if the foundations...
BE HAPPY
MEDITATIONS ON BEING. AND HAPPINESS. In the range of travel, I've seen some of the most remarkably dismal, difficult and challenging "survival-focused" environments. And the people in them. Still, smiles emerge. Yes, these New Dehli school girls below likely have...
The importance of designing human
Remembering who the ultimate client is HUMANKIND DESIGN I was talking to a client about the strategy of his brand -- mostly operations, organizational planning and construction -- and I asked him, "what about the people, what's their connection?" He looked at me,...
The Work of Everyday
The Journal of the Practice There is one thing we cannot forget, and that is memory itself. In 40 years of actively designing, working on design and writing and speaking on design practice and innovation, I recall the labyrinthine journey of that involvement. It's...
Brand Scouting
As you explore the perimeter, you scout the range of the work. In our working experience, and in being a Scout and the magnetism of sensation, you need to get close in, first hand, to understand the nature of a brand, its people, its culture; it won't be something...
Sparklers
Sparking innovation and change. There is legitimacy to the metaphor of Fire. Girvin, the team -- and Girvin, the family -- are fierce lovers of fire. We've noted that earlier. But any fire starts with a spark, which can be the beginning of a perceived idea and...
POW[ER]
Designing spectacle SPECTACLE, LITERALLY, LIES IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER. The more experienced the viewer is, the more that person has seen, therein the difference in the appearance of that which is seen, which is, literally, the spectacle. Studying spectacular...