by Tim Girvin | Brands, Concepts, Places, Retail, Storytelling | Jul 30, 2015
SIGNAGE, MESSAGING, SCALE AND BEAUTY. I’m not saying that we’ve not designed massive signage. We have, we’ve created signing that can be seen for miles. Yes, Vegas. And other places. But what I admire are more elegantly restrained solutions. What one might think are...
by Tim Girvin | Brands, Concepts, Retail | Nov 18, 2014
Brands that come from nowhere that surprise, alarm, and boom on the scene as spectacle. Or breeze in, quiet as the fog, a shadow of revelation. What have you seen that came on you as a surprise — out-of-the-blue, amazing, extraordinary, marvel-making and wonderment?...
by Tim Girvin | Concepts, Retail, Storytelling | Nov 11, 2014
The Script of The Multi-Stroke Brush Lettering Old-style Grocery Signage Script When I began my career [1975,] I was a lettering artist, a sign-writer. I wasn’t a designer, I was more to a kind of tradesman. I had no idea about what design was, per se — I knew about...
by Tim Girvin | Brands, Concepts, Retail, Trends | Sep 30, 2014
Brands, Logos, Communities Being in the business of design, and with a long history of work in the translation of the storytelling of brands into graphical interpretations, the logotype is at the center of brand style. And while there might be many layers of...
by Tim Girvin | Brands, Interior Design, Places, Retail | Sep 22, 2014
Exploring Retail Architecture, Metaphor and Magic. I had a chance to observe the strategic evolutions of Nordstrom’s brand presence in my friendship with Dawn A. Clark, AIA LeedAP — lead architectural strategist and team leader in the newly evolving architectural and...
by Tim Girvin | Brands, Concepts, Retail | Sep 3, 2014
Brand Medicine, 101. In our history, there are times when brand, their organic systems, begin to falter. — They don’t speak to a community, or they forgot who they were talking to, what they were relating, carrying a story and a product to a certain audience. As in...
by Tim Girvin | Brands, Cool People, Retail | Aug 19, 2014
PRODUCT STRATEGY, INDUSTRIAL DESIGN, FASHION, AND THEIR INTERTWINEMENT I was thinking about my relationship with the micro-camera, which — for years, that was a folio of 10s of 1,000s of photographs. After clearing out my files, and reducing the collections, I’m still...
by Tim Girvin | Brands, Concepts, Places, Retail, Scent | Jul 1, 2014
Designing a Pathway of Personality, Fragrance and Their Retail Perfume Portal. In a note forwarded by retail strategist and architect, Dawn A. Clark, she notes Selfridges’ newest innovation — a Perfume Laboratory [Videolink]. As has been pointed out by many,...
by Tim Girvin | Concepts, Places, Retail, Scent | May 8, 2014
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...
by Tim Girvin | Places, Retail | Dec 2, 2013
Designing Signing Message Strategies: the Beginning, and the Ending, of Storytelling. Every story has a beginning, and an ending — each of us has a story, that has one beginning, and another start, and another initiation — and perhaps an ending that we all...
