by Tim Girvin | Concepts | Mar 29, 2016
PLACEMAKING AND JOURNEYS ………………….. WORKING + BEING IN A CERTAIN PLACE — A JOURNEY OF FINDING. When you get some where, what do you find? There’s one critical point, to the idea of working in other places in the world and that is learning to be there: work there,...
by Tim Girvin | Concepts, Places | Dec 23, 2015
Rangelands, New Mexico — a long and blank expanse. Then there’s a sign. But it’s presuming something: you know where you’re going. I was transversing high desert rangelands, crossing the state, in a journey to a Monastery out in the desert. On the way there, I saw a...
by Tim Girvin | Concepts, Designers, Places, Storytelling | Oct 13, 2015
THE WAYFINDER’S ART. THE DESIGN OF SIGNS. Where to? The art of being lost and finding your way. I WAS LOST, NOW I AM FOUND. What of the emotionality of that experience — I’m lost? I’m found. I’m finding my way? To pleas of positioning and geographic self...
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 | Concepts, Storytelling | Jun 10, 2015
The Context of Message, Framing of Context and Visualization I look for signs that aren’t signs — in a conventional sense — they tell another deeper story, but sigils that signal a message that stand for the nature of a place. Cairns, ovoo, iwakura no mononoke,...
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 | 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 | Concepts, Places, Storytelling | Sep 25, 2014
There is the sign, which is a way — a tool to explain process and direction, to instruct, to mark, to place: made. The Ace Hotel, Expressed Metal Plate But to the notion of place-making, how that sign is made, gesture or stone, or cut metal, wood can tell a layering...
by Tim Girvin | Concepts, Places | Aug 14, 2014
Exploring Design | Culture | Place: Iceland and a Graphical History In the journey of anyplace, anywhere, there is a re-counting, as you walk back in time, you count your moments and you gather up your steps, in recounting. And sometimes that striding will take you...
by Tim Girvin | Concepts, Designers, Places, Storytelling | May 6, 2014
There are bad signs, and then there are worse signs. In the journey of a designer of signing and related environmental graphics — the core point of the design strategy is storytelling — the story might be: this is the place; go here, do not go here, you...
