by Tim Girvin | Brands, Concepts, Designers, Storytelling | Feb 3, 2015
Make something. Use your hands. What’s coming back to me is the realm of the personal — that which is made by a person, from that person, to me. As we’ve moved GIRVIN from downtown Seattle [they’re demolishing our building] to the bottom of West Queen Anne, we’ve all...
by Tim Girvin | Brands, Concepts, Human brands, Storytelling | Jan 22, 2015
In the Work of the Personal and the Intertwinement of Brand There is knowing and there is being. What do you know? And what do you — be? In the work of branding, looking for soul and truth, sometimes I feel like a kind of vampire hunter, looking for the real, the...
by Tim Girvin | Artists, Concepts, Cool People, Motion Pictures, Storytelling | Jan 20, 2015
The Waft and Weft of Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar.” There is a story, then a story within the story, a story behind the story, and the story that you hold in your mind, wrists, fingertips. They weave. Or lips, in the love story that never ends, it keeps going on,...
by Tim Girvin | Concepts, Designers, Storytelling, Trends | Dec 24, 2014
The Principle of the Search: More Beauty [Photo: Dawn A. Clark, AIA Leed AP] In our life journey, as creatives — people that create — we listen, absorb, gather, interpret and make meaning. We work to import and deliver content in a manner that is compelling to a...
by Tim Girvin | Brands, Concepts, Storytelling | Dec 16, 2014
EBOLA AND BRANDING OR REBRANDING. I was talking to a GIRVIN colleague about the CDC’s management of the Ebola viral spread — from Africa, now stateside. That might be a question to rebranding [the CDC — to reliability,] as well. We’d talked about the legacy of their...
by Tim Girvin | Concepts, Places, Storytelling | Dec 9, 2014
The Use of Writing as a Talismanic Device in Architecture When GIRVIN had an office in NYC, off 26th and Broadway, I used to walk around, looking in on shops and restaurants. I found a little curiosity shop, a dealer in ancient antiquities and I spied some familiar...
by Tim Girvin | Artists, Concepts, Designers, Storytelling | Dec 4, 2014
Design Mysticism When you go deep. As a designer, you might meditate on your work, what you’re doing. And your being in that doing. There might be a brand strategy, and the unfolding character of tactics and deployment. But making marks is a legacy that is thousands...
by Tim Girvin | Brands, Concepts, Storytelling, Trends | Nov 20, 2014
The Hatching Stroke and the Ubiquity of Archetypal Design Thinking # I was walking the beach near my studios and found the above mark, cross-hacked into a log, the proverbial “pound” or number sign. And I wondered about it. “When this type of mark is made, what...
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, Storytelling | Nov 6, 2014
Can you fight? Perhaps you’ve had some exposure to boxing? You know what comes of it. The movement is a dance — it’s a whirling and spinning spar — a jumping and explosive hip hop to reach out in a ring, ‘round you. All of the training is about speed and stamina —...
