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Mystery Brands

Brands That Live in the Dark Is there ever a brand that lives on the quiet side, unknown, unseen — but quested after? Can you think of one? If you’re a searcher for the unknown, you walk out to where others do not. You go where others care not to linger....

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...