I was talking with an AI-focused electrical engineer about the sound, the signal of electricity.
What one person might describe as “static,” another might refer to as the AC’s actual flow through transformative magnetic fields, particularly ferrous or other magnet materials—and in this “flow”—they vibrate. The sine curves that are evidenced are like whipping ripples, electrons running in waves of light—and sound.
Hmmmmm…
Relating this project to branding and design—as all of us are here for this line of thinking—I note an earlier project, with Tom Roberts‘s explication of energetic flow in high intensity racing, I was looking for a way to draw this concept, literally to “draw out flow.” Drawing-out the flow, the electrical and molecular construct, manifests as rippling which speaks to time.
I experimented in water and sand.
The final solution articulates impetus, which begins in
the foundational stroke, a strike-down, explosive
stake on the paper, that then unfurls in a dynamic flow-outwards, a fluency.
Culturally, rippling is an expression that crosses conceptual boundaries,
like this emanating cartography from a 19th century Hebrew document.
We parlay these principles of rippling, circles and outflow in some of our own models.
Like this presentation mapping from a talk that I gave at Procter & Gamble’s Building One auditorium, downtown Cincinnati—for a talk to the entire creative team at P&G, several hundred people, as requested by Gilbert Cloyd and A.G. Lafley, along with Susan Arnold—1995, hitherto a new principle we wrote on brand storytelling.
Rippling, emanation and fluency are apt poetics for brand development.
While this conversation began with a discussion about the “sound of electricity,” other discussions explore the principles of out-flow, expansive effects in the idea of “the ripple.”
It comes back to the contemplation of how ideas get out.
They splash, and it goes on and on.
For-ever.
When there’s a stone cast—tossed on water, then there’s a ripple, a watered wave, they’re both rolling movements, or the echoing clatter of sound from stone on stone, traversing the air, flowing-out.
Being at a river, flowing, yet again, into the sea—all is still, the barest breeze waffles the placid transition of the water, sunlight dapples the sheen of the riverflow—a quiet stillness.
As I cast the stone, across the smooth water—its rippling is a sonic object and skipping through the momentum of time—an arc of moments; I’m watching the stone trip its way across the river in the morning light. As I’m watching the reaction of the water, it’s changing the character of the surface. Clipping the skin of the water, rings of movement extend—the rippling.
And, as a brand philosopher—and designer—I’m thinking about the touch of people, the movement of the story, it’s the spoken murmuring. Sharing, fluttering — the motion. How people share, ideas and other gifts. E-motion is but that—the psychic motion of people.
Rippling—as I stand at the edge of the river, contemplating the finish of the tossed stone movement, I see the softest lulling at the trees that extend from the edge of the riverine sway.
Like a breeze, it’s the whisper of an idea—like the murmuration of birds, they flow like an idea—one, another, to an other. They ripple across the water of time, then they come back—like everything.
It goes out, and comes back—from one, to many. Returned…the reflective, and reflexive story. It was their story, a brand story, now “it’s my story.”
The storied rippling—the true wave, a vibration, the flow of human kind. Branding is like the poetry of natural forces, the sparked fire of human ideals—their outbound fluency—and the water that nurtures the journey, the rippling out, the reflection and modeling of surfaces and they come back with new stories.
Back again.
Tim | West Queen Anne Elementary School
GIRVIN | Strategic Brands
Destination Brands
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Good morning from Queen Anne, Seattle
