S P I R I T S & D I S S O L U T I O N
Fire & Water Isn't it so that the making of spirit -- the ethanol-effused outcomes of herbal, vegetal, fruit-based titration and filtration -- the quintessential search for the soul of boosted and intense flavoring -- is one of perpetual dissolving [dissolution?]...
Meditations on Manners
When I was in Bhutan, high in the misted Himalayan mountains, I'd spied a remote monastery and spoke to my guide, Tsewang Nidup about "getting up there." We did get up there, like nearly every other lonely vista we aspired to summit -- centuries-old crag-balanced...
The strategy of the menu — designing storytelling and brand experience: the starting point.
How to plan and design a menu? Key is close collaboration -- and knowing the diner, the experience strategy, the character of illumination, stylistic consciousness, and the budgeting of items in relation to the financial strategy of the brand. A menu, like the...
Instant imagery
The immediate illustration of place and being. Finding the moment, in momentum Image above, an instant | Jakarta, Indonesia | Girvin I contemplate the instantaneous -- and the drawing out of the drawn, the painted or scratched statement of the moment, closely seen,...
Meetings With Remarkable Men
Richard Meier and Massimo Vignelli [above] video | Nowness When I was working in NYC, decades back, I'd linked to Richard Meier on the subject of typography and signing. The selected font of study, designed by another classical alphabet scholar and typographic...
Don’t we try to make the world a better place?
Doing goodness. Surely, some do. Sometimes the celebration of goodness would seem the higher calling, in the flurry of the unrelenting challenges we face. Video, here. From our friends at PSFK: In the words of Fernando Semenzato, SVP of Content for FOX International...
12.12.12. The end of the world, as we thought about it.
12.12.12. The end of the world, as we thought about what we know about it. Meditations on Apocalypse I contemplate the nature of the end of things, 12.12, 12. 21, whatever -- and what is that, to the notation of the end. Apocalypse, etymologically [like Calypso] is...
Giant containers for juice — Starbuck’s drive, onwards
Innovations in retail place-making strategies When I first heard about the idea of a new shipping container shop for Starbucks, I'd presumed that it might be the new modeling for the Evolution Fresh shop that was masterminded by Arthur Rubinfeld. But it's a different...
The flood of ideas, PNNL’s Resilient Tunnel Plug
Branding innovation labs and their creations Over the course of the last several years, Girvin's teams have been working in Richland, Washington with PNNL on evolving messaging and positioning strategies for one of the largest research and innovation implementation...
The Design of Parfum | The Art Direction of Place
Diptyque | Paris Perfumed Environments: The Design of the Fragranced Retail Experience To every product, there is a story, to every story, there is a telling — and in every telling, there is a person that offers that tale. In this sequence of blogs, the notations have...