Blogs By Tim Girvin
Designing for Speed | Brands, Cars and Auto Motives
My exposure to speed-related branding was early, about 7 years old. I realized at that moment that graphical storytelling, logos on things, could set the pace for the holistic look of the ride—and that letter styling could offer all the more to the compositing of...
Sensuality and Experientiality | Brand Pattern Language in Signage and Environmental Graphics
Are you a touchy-feely person? From a GIRVIN book of mūdra, symbolic hand-poses— the universal language of gesture. I’m very much about touch. And feeling. The realm of the GIRVIN brand work is about hand-craft, making brands by hand, grasping digital interpretations...
Youness | The Unmistakable Onliness of You
You I’ve been workshopping, talking, and listening to, people about their brands, and the notation of distinctivity—the characteristics of differentiation. Of course, as any brand strategist, designer, steward, you might be thinking, “yes, I work on a brand— but,...
Handcrafted Wayfinding in the Era of AI
The Nuance of the Hand-Wrought Being a handworker—a person that, over the last half century, has utilized my hands as a consistent pathway to the articulation of ideas, I tend to look for, and create in, the spirit of those things. You—being a creative person—know...
The Gesture of Everything | Ch’i, Zen and Everythingness
Using history and allegory to explore what lies beneath I was teaching a client and friend the particulars of Asian brush work, how to draw and paint using the vocabulary of two intertwined forms of Chinese-based, Japanese painting, suiboku-ga and haboku. With my...
The BrandQuest® for the Wave | Trends, Surfing Allegories, and the Soul of the Sea
The roll of the sea, the waves of change, and riding the future. Where I surf the waves are irregular and wild—they gather steam from global swells and mix up in a frothy mix that is distinctly inarticulate on the Northerly shores of the Washington coast, by...
The Illustration of language, the flow of color in calligraphy
An color-washed innovation in handcrafted lettering for commerce During my earlier years, I got a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, in funding a journey, a type designer's odyssey—my so-called “Alphabet Odyssey,” to meet, talk and share with the greats...
The Brand As Beacon | Symbolism and Allegory
We tend to think allegorically about the work that we do— brand as fire, design as transformation, and markings as magic. And plenty of the clients that we work with think of their enterprises as deeply metaphorical and soulfully intentioned —light bringers, wellness...
The Quest for Flow | Mystical Principles in Brand Design
Developing Hand-crafted Symbols as Deep Metaphors During my college years, I studied calligraphy with Lloyd Reynolds— the maestro of the calligraphic arts that inflamed Steve Jobs, during Steve’s limited foray at Reed College. And a core precept—this would be the I +...
A Drawing on Love
Designing a hand drawn stamp for the United States Post Office Everyone knows that I’m moving; I’ve been in—and out—of the Northwest Industrial Buildings at the foot of Queen Anne Hill, crossed in the nexus of Denny and Western, for 30 years. I was actually here, as...