As brand strategists and designers of brands, we think about memory as a key reference to relationships in community—it’s a simple questioning: what’s memorable? For a customer, GIRVIN’s Brand R’s: which asks: what are the key points of relevance—what’s immediately useful? And what of resonance—the “song” of the brand is right, feels right, looks aligned. And finally—what leads to a relationship? In our thinking, this comes to the personal and reflective nature of the brand as a story that could be shared as in, “this is my brand.”
For us, there’s a code, a string of references that map back to the brand. One can notate these as contemplations, looking at perception of and the shaping of content, Which could be, like the transit mapping, for example, like this subway mapping in Seoul—shown above. It’s a map, a cartography to get there.
Or, as a brand strategist, the mapping notations of a project journal and journey—the central egg of the idea, and the ideals of the communication matrix—which comes down to a meditation on content and strategy for how that will be revealed.
When you think about journey and brand processions, one can think about it as a string of sensorial encounters—nearly a synaesthetic interplay of sensations. When I consider journey strategy, it’s surely about what one sees, but too, about scent, taste, touch and sound. These are obviously understood details by anyone that works in the interplay of architecture, place-making considerations and their nexus in brand-related tactics.
As I’d referenced in my notes on [w]health—the brand design of women’s-health—one might think of packaging as a variation on built environments. They’re both containers, part might relate to the Japanese aesthetic of tsutsumu [a Dentsu production,] a conception of wrapping that presumes that the journey to the object is, unto itself, a special part of the experience of exchange.
A book on “the art of wrapping.”
One might consider that the sequencing is a matter of patterning, it’s a pattern that approaches a place—like Ken Rock’s incisions on Bond Street, Manhattan,
creating a foot-fall sensation and visual labyrinth.
Sidewalk incisions by Ken Rock
25 Bond, NYC, NY
That idea of patterned journey-making and experience design can find it set in finger, rather than foot, expression that comes back, in everything, towards the notion of sensorial patterning. What about a packaged object like—one of my favorite drinks, Monster, whose surface is an intricate narrative of embossed impressions.
That can apply to a building’s storytelling, which is a literal journey, which we’ve written extensively about—brand patterning in placemaking.
Herzog & DeMeuron built this storytelling into their expressions just across the street—40 BOND,
an interwoven and sculptural array that expresses the narrative of the property.
That could be a larger patterning and distinctive mnemonic, like Dawn Clark and James Carpenter‘s Nordstrom flagship in Manhattan, a reference to waves,
a vast expanse of light, and core storytelling towards
fluency and movement, and GIRVIN’s branding, signage, throughout.
A pattern is a larger schematic—there can be voice, the messaging of a brand is a textual construction of a linguistic patterning. Brandcode® a GIRVIN parlance for the conglomeration of managed brand expressions—is a way in which brand participants access the holism of sensate experiences.
A voiced patterning can be a tenor of uplift, a graphical patterning expression can be a storytelling that illustrates the layered experience of the brand, color can be an integrative link between tiers of experiences—like our work on Siren Song, where we set the interplay our colors for interior design, with our labeling strategy.
In the long run at the strategy of patterning, it comes, too, to symbolic thinking and deeper metaphors. And, as any brand strategist knows, brands start as idealized visions of change and transformation, they offer a transitioning from one state of being to another points of acquisitive shifting. “With this brand, –––––––, I became…” Different.
Looking forward to the next patterning.
Onwards with the journey
Tim Girvin | Principal, Founder and Chief Creative Officer,
GIRVIN | Strategic Branding & Design
www.girvin.com
MCMLXXVI
IBI FUNDATA
Follow Us:
Facebook LinkedIn Instagram Behance
B R A N D + A R C H I T E C T U R E | OSEANSTUDIOS.
A new [10 year old] collaborative partnership with GIRVIN’s teams.