by Tim Girvin | Interior Design, Places, Storytelling | Sep 18, 2025
Since 1972, I’ve created a long string of design environments—from my on-campus college office in 1973, while at The Evergreen State College—with my first business license—the cabin that I lived and worked in on Eld Inlet—named Tim Girvin+Alphabet, off Murray Court...
by Tim Girvin | Brands, Cool People, Human brands, Motion Pictures | Sep 8, 2025
Everyone has stories about logo projects. [For example, our Kettle story?] As every reader knows, the core strategy of brand development, as an outreach to humans, enterprise development and commerce, is that those people embrace the brand to create their own personal...
by Tim Girvin | Brands, Storytelling | Aug 28, 2025
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...
by Tim Girvin | Brand Mysticism, Concepts, Interior Design, Places, Retail | Aug 22, 2025
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...
by Tim Girvin | Brand Mysticism, Concepts | Aug 14, 2025
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,...
by Tim Girvin | Concepts, Places, Retail | Aug 5, 2025
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...
by Tim Girvin | Concepts, Cool People, Storytelling | Jul 25, 2025
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...
by Tim Girvin | Concepts, Storytelling | Jul 16, 2025
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...
by Tim Girvin | Brands | Jul 9, 2025
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...
by Tim Girvin | Brand Mysticism, Concepts | Jun 26, 2025
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...
