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 experience. Rolling down the hill at—that time, breakneck speed—with a cool logo added to the memorability of the experience, even in a four-wheeled wagon.
My Dad was a surgeon, who was called-out at all hours, at every breaking emergency.
We’d hear the phone ringing in the middle of the night, then we’d hear the car start, the electric garage door opening and closing and he’d head out in his Volkswagen Beetle, a brilliant red “bug.” And in another adventuresome exposure, he’d drag me around on a sled in the snow, reeling around corners, the blocks on the South Hill in Spokane, and that engine would hum and spew exhaust as we gleefully careened the corner. Another core mnemonic was that closely-viewed logo as I trailed around—kind of a Nordic Volkswagen script.
Very cool, a touchable object—and again—unforgettable.
Isn’t it so that early experiences—surprise encounters, chance discoveries, lend themselves to the implantation of ideals, that are then revealed as later flowerings in life? Once seen, never forgotten in the genetics of a visual vocabulary. There are patterns that play out and continue to reveal themselves.
Even to the degree of a return, of sorts, to earlier encounters, like working with Lauren Schuler and Richard Donner on, again a recollection, the design package for the film “Radio Flyer,” as modified here in a stacked logo configuration:
What goes around comes around, comes around.
Speaking of film design programs and theatrical branding, I worked with Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer on a string of fast motion features—including, in the end, their identity as a team of producers, and then an expansion of the thunderbolt metaphor that we created, a speed track on a stretch of highway and the single thunderbolt—and a lone tree, that being Jerry Bruckheimer.
Working with Paramount Studios and the Simpson Bruckheimer teams GIRVIN designed theatrical brand logo programs for “Top Gun,” “Gone in 60 Seconds,” and “Days of Thunder.”
Speaking of “automotive” and “speed” I designed, on-site at Paramount Studios Theatrical Advertising Executive Offices, the master of the “Transformers” logo type in 2007 for Nancy Goliger and Lucia Ludovico—while this lasted for nearly a decade, it was replaced, then has returned in the latest feature, “Rise of the Beasts,” which we also designed for Rodd Perry at Paramount.
But I’m curious about designing graphical mnemonics for vehicles, how to skin a story on a ride.
For example, an early pro bono logo creation of the CrimeStoppers applications for the Pierce County, Tacoma Sheriff’s Office comes back as a muscle show car—an aligned narrative for crime tipsters and anonymous clues.
My logo for CrimeStoppers, built decades ago was specific to a sense of illustrated urgency, and
the power of citizens to contribute to the solution of crime-solving.
Could you drive into a state of flow?
Could flow create a fluency in living faster, better, calmer and more focused?
Yes. Tom Roberts says you can, with his counsel, make it so!
You could train with the master of flow, Tom Roberts, race car driver, stunt pilot, and Tibetan Buddhist—drive at a 220 MPH fluency on the toughest stretch of the legendary track, the Nürburgring Nordschliefe: the “Green Hell.” Train with EuroTrack, also designed by GIRVIN.
Celebrate the love of driving with Drive Your Heart Out—
a community-based brand founded by Parker Brown,
driving enthusiast and constant roadster—brand designed by GIRVIN.
And then there are trucks—who doesn’t love trucks–like a Super Nintendo shipper?
Happy pet mobile trucks, via the traveling tour bus from the GIRVIN-branded Seattle Humane.
A “Hey Neighbor” field marketing tour in Boulder, CO for Kettle Brands
during GIRVIN’s AOR stint for Kettle Brands,
Emerald and Diamond Foods.
Kettle Flavor Vans—Jalapeño please.
Maple Bacon, yeah.
Kettle Bugging.
When I was working in Tokyo with Shiseido and TVAsahi, I met the industrial design leadership from Nissan at CreativeBox at Harajuku, the Nissan house industrial design group, still in play to this day. The ask, speaking of speed, was a GIRVIN-finalized solution for the ID of the Nissan Badge—slightly inflated, evolved, heavier custom font design for the logo NISSAN. That lasted until this solution.
We like ours better—it’s prouder. Stronger. More like a badge, something to wear on your hood, in your ‘hood.
Cars, in all their iterative evolution, are beautiful exemplars of the complex principles of holistic industrial design.
They’re wholly sensate containments, human dreams and imaginings—and, in their purpose—they get you from one place to another in a manner that envisions the dreams of the driver and passengers.
The drive to make beauty and speed, interplayed, it’s a legacy for GIRVIN’s history, and—interestingly, automobiles and graphic expressions lies at the beginning of my early life, and two, the beginnings of my career—
as a sign painter on trucks, motorcycles, and airplanes.
Tim Girvin | GIRVIN | West Queen Anne Elementary School
Offices, Libraries and Galleries.
Theatrical Branding | Technology Branding | Destination Brands
Dining Design | CPG
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