by Tim Girvin | Artists, Concepts, Designers | Mar 8, 2017
The Scribbling of Design Theorems — Drafting With Navigational Instruments The word scribe to script, as a verb, is a “scratching, a scribble, a marking.” Describe comes to mind, for in that scratching, definition and articulation of idea becomes manifest — and in a...
by Tim Girvin | Concepts, Cool People, Designers | Apr 19, 2016
Branding Buildings | Building Brands — Aligning Typefaces With Architecture In my earlier years I lived in a neighborhood laden with architects — like when I was 12 years old, in Spokane, Washington. I lived in a MidCenturyModern house [the one at 42nd & Perry]...
by Tim Girvin | Concepts, Cool People | Jun 6, 2015
Alphabet Odyssey | 1976 Earlier in my life, late 1970s, I’d reached to Hermann Zapf about a possible visit, with him and his wife, Gudrun Zapf von Hesse, in Darmstadt, Germany. I’d made the connection through the leadership of the Klingspor Museum, in Offenbach am...
by Tim Girvin | Concepts, Storytelling | Apr 22, 2014
When you draw a letter, what happens? A drawing is a drawing out; draw a letter, the string of story unspools and it’s something more. A letter is a map, an anciently originated succession of markings, a thought cartography, a seared, scarred, scratched, penned,...
by Tim Girvin | Concepts, Trends | Oct 1, 2012
RETHINKING ANCIENT DESIGN — REMADE NOW, NEW. I’m interested in the idea of old [even ancient] design strategies rethought, to new principles of action. My own history is about scouring and memorizing 2,500 years of alphabetic history, and dreaming new...
by Tim Girvin | Concepts, General | Feb 18, 2008
The very center of the work that I do lies here, in the heart of the letterform. There can be just that one touch, that relates to the person. D.4-D. The letter, big or small, translates to content. c1460 G. ASHBY Policy Prince 648 Poems (E.E.T.S.) 33 Yf god sende you...
by Tim Girvin | General, Motion Pictures, Storytelling | Aug 1, 2007
Beowulf What calls, from ancient halls, the spirit of that other distant world, far more than a thousand and five hundred years back in the balled skein of time? Beowulf! Palaeography, or the history of the written world has long been a strategic underpinning of what...
by Tim Girvin | Concepts, Motion Pictures | Feb 24, 2007
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,...