MOVING GIRVIN, A HISTORY: 19 TRANSITIONS
IN THE HISTORY OF A PRACTICE THAT HAS OPERATED CONTINUOUSLY FOR NEARLY 50 YEARS—SINCE OUR FOUNDING IN 1976—THERE MUST HAVE BEEN A LOT OF DIFFERENT STUDIOS, RIGHT? YES, MANY. AND MANY MOVES. That comes out to the following sequence, setting workplaces @ The Evergreen...
THE SYMBOLISM OF WEAVING | THE INTERLACEMENT OF MEANING, MESSAGE, CONTEXT AND CONSTRUCTION
TIERING MESSAGING AND LAYERING OF INTENTION IN BRAND NARRATIVES AND STORYTELLING In my earlier work as a calligrapher and lettersmith, I explored—and still study in our work—the idea of layering messages. I see this as a kind of palimpsest—letters on one tier, a...
DEEP BRAND SPACE | SYMBOLICAL BRAND PLACE-MAKING
THE ORDER OF PATHWAYS AND THE TOUCH OF THE MEMORABLE M A K E A M A Z E M E N T. As brand designers—as with any part of human creativity, “a making” or the construction of a visible object, the made art or the scribed breath of a poem—the point would be to answer this...
Branding Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer Films
The Strike of the Twin Lightning Bolts
By This You Are Named
Brand naming As many know, there is a profession of nomenclature strategy—people who “name” things. It’s an intriguing meditation, given ancient character of the concept of the name, which as the tradition of antiquity proffers, speaks literally to the true nature of...
ON MAKING
M A K E Y O U R W A Y S BRAND SPACE—THE STRATEGY OF MAKING—STORYTELLING, PLACE-MAKING, THE PERSONAL JOURNEY OF THE WORK—WHAT YOU MAKE AND THE WAY YOU MAKE IT. Isn’t it so that our journey—as creatives, designers, wordsmiths, strategists—is a stride towards finding?...
WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE? | BRANDS AND BELIEF
WORKSHOPPING LOVE AND PASSION I was talking to a colleague about “love,” the notion of letter-writing and love-worthy thoughts expressed in a hand-notated missive, one human to another. To that, we were talking about stamps—particularly this love stamp I’d designed...
MEDITATIONS ON SPEED: FAST BRANDS, SLOW BRANDS— WHAT’S BEST?
IS EVERYTHING SLOWER NOW? In the purported aftermath of the Covidularity—[right, invented,] it’s been a persistent experience for me for things to be slowing down. Items of the trade that we’re in, strategy, design and production—paper, for example—hard to find, some...
THE SEARCH FOR BEAUTY AND THE SHOCK OF WOW
As designers, we’re looking for memorable impact—design solutions that are memorable, laden with ineluctable magic, surprise, wondrous artfulness, amazing and happiness-creating, or—more particularly, treatments that invoke the sense of wow! Wow is unforgettable. Tim...
THE STRATEGY OF ZEN, MARKINGS AND MEANING
SIMPLIFYING THE CONCATENATION OF BEING. Sometimes, simply being is—just by itself, complicated; it’s trying to be good to oneself, respectful of others, following a plan and a pathway, and doing good. Sometimes, it feels like it’s all a little bit much—then again, in...