Tim Girvin’s writing on motion picture design,
originally curated by GIRVIN friend and motion picture composer,
Stuart Balcomb.

Beginning with “Apocalypse Now,” Tim Girvin has designed over 400 film titles.
We present to you his writings about the Process of Branding.

Strategic Branding and the Game of Chess

Integrative moves on the brand board of enterprise. The logo above, for the US / China Chess Summit, is a global tournament that GIRVIN created for a group of chess aficionados that see chess as a investment forum for growing acute thinking—the agency to strategic...

A chat with Robert Evans | Schulberg Building | Paramount Studios

A walk-around hello, on the Lot, Summer, 2007 When I was working on the Paramount lot on Melrose—with the executive team in the theatrical advertising office—I frequently worked onsite in hand-drawing and tuning, improving logo art for various projects, including, for...

The Kimber Script Logo

Classical lettercraft meets a precision draft, engraved in steel. In the spring cleaning of our moves to GIRVIN’s 16th office location, in the West Queen Anne Elementary School, in Seattle I was sorting through a grouping of files—like a large grouping, dozens of...

Blandism and the Detailing of Typographic Design Linguistics

What sways to blandishment? A lot of discussions around last week’s blog— and the notion of brand blandism, and some asked, “wait, so you’re saying that san serif is too bland, too plain, not… ‘exciting’ enough?” No, that’s not the point. As I’d mentioned before, in a...

The Brand Design of the Doc Savage Legacy

What goes around, comes around— youthful lettering dabbles becomes a full time career. In GIRVIN's history as designers for theatrical marketing and advertising, we’ve got legacy, a heritage of literally hundreds of motion pictures — starting with kickoff logo studies...

Notes on The Matrix design

There's another symbolic value to the O and the 1 beyond the nature of the digital translation of content and interpretation. O, the curved enclosure -- is, in sequence etymologically -- from Sanskrit -- the sunya; Arabic, sifr; Medieval Latin, ciphra; the cipher, the...