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Memories of my Mother As some know, my Mother recently died—our celebration of life emerges in days, and that, of course, is cause for a meditation on my learnings with her, her influences and profound impetus on my life. The alignment with creativity, motherhood and the feminine principle for me literally began with her. During […]
A Journey in Design Explorations. When I first went to Japan to present my work as a designer, I was advised that I should be bringing gifts, and that I should offer the greeting–introducing myself, as well as the offer. This went like this, Hajimemashite, Tim Gabin to omoimas, handing my business card, another ritual, […]
GIRVIN’s Ideator® Naming program came into being with Garden Botanika, the first process-driven naming solution created by Tim Girvin and his team. This led to 18 stores that GIRVIN designed for Garden Botanika and more than 400 SKUs, organized in channel groups, treatment types and demographies. When I was working with Jeff Brotman—on this project, […]
The GIRVIN | Strategic Branding & Design team have a long history in creating pathways to humanize the strategic impressions—and tactical outcomes, in technology brand experience—for enterprise employees, community relationships and customers. In a legacy of reviewing technological startups, as a judge in student competitions, as well as tech developer’s conferences, and in kickoff sessions […]
Solving brand challenges in a collaborative innovation summit I created the first BrandQuest® a registered IP for GIRVIN in the request of an unusual challenge by a team from IBM, fronted by Nobuo Mii in 1993—a mission to build a microprocessor-powered personal computer based on the RISC system, a reduced induction and cooler-running computing system. […]
Most people know my notes, and my personal icon, the Wanderer Since 1999, I’ve had a relationship with the metaphor of a path chosen in a wandering, winding, wended pathway, a quest for answers and insights that is particular to a non-linear way of thinking—rather than a straight line, I respect, and inspect, a way […]
Notes on scouting and the meaning of the Eagle Scout legacy. Sure, some of you are Eagle Scouts—you know the drill, the years of Scout journeying, 30-milers, 50-milers, growth in the transitioning from Tenderfoot beginnings, Second Class, First Class, the move to Star, Life and finally, the 21 merit badges–fulfillment and collection, the completion of […]
It’s been an intriguing pleasure working at the behest of theatrical “stars.” Surely, thinking about it—acting, or directing, is a complex expectation— the hours are demanding, the scale of the commitment is enormous, the creative expansiveness is deep. During production, everything can change, emotions roil, creative strategies convert to tactical realities and evolutions, dailies can […]
Mirror Mirror on the Wall, Who’s the Fairest of Them All? Any study of this film’s current premise and promotion, the pitch and proposition— critical notes from the social community—might be up for a overload of remarkably acidic commentary. People, apparently, are not liking the marketing play—or making notes to that effect. It might be […]
Above, speaking of scripts, a Girvin stylistic expression: a broadly splayed opening capital, a hairline accentuation, a strike stroke from the opening character in its initiation, a bounced baseline and jumped x-height, an unexpected ligature, widely varied pen angles, with a hooked tail flourish and double-ruled underflourish to nest the mark. I started my career […]
The study of moves on the board. I was talking to a client about chess strategy, the moves, the personality of the players—the tactical delicacy of the moves. Are there archetypes in the game? Yes, player archetypes. First off, the legacy of the game is roughly 1400 years old—and, if you’re a player, you’d likely […]
Workshopping allegories and brand soul I was thinking about the question of inquiry and exploration, the search—reaching in(to people)—listening to them, learning from them, and gathering their impressions and ideas. Search for it, listen to them, what does that look like? But more so, to the construct of what they love, what they love doing, […]
Portfolios, collectible design processions and creating metaphorical gallery experiences. It’s an interesting contemplation to think about brand work, design, and value. Surely there is a lot of conversation about design as a value-inducement to brand propositions. Well-designed brands make them usefully relevant, emotionally viable, resonantly in tune with brand relationships—and we’ve written extensively about this […]
Could a brand be so beautiful that it should be made into jewelry? “Sure,” says Susy Korb, an earlier Creative Director at Tiffany&Co., she asked, “Could we create a font that could be used in our print, as well as for actual fabrication into precious metals?” In our experience with laser and water-jet-related incisions in […]
Everyone has a powerful connection to their mothers. My mother, Lila Lee Shaw Girvin died this past week. And it called into contemplation all of the things that one thinks about in death—of anyone near. You’re thinking, “they were here, now they’re gone. Forever.” It’s something to contemplate that she was my matrix, my inspiratrix, […]
The Quest for the Most Beautiful | Brands, Enterprises, Narratives and the People That Make Them. In our life journey, the threading of our work, as creatives—people that create— we listen, absorb, gather, interpret and make meaning. We work to import and deliver visual and messaged content in a manner that is compelling to a […]
How Bright the Future? Could a Creative Brief be…Brief? Not really. Brevity isn’t the point, it’s the concision of the document. This is a talk that I was asked to offer at P&G, then later again at Mark Anthony Brands—the beverage group in Vancouver, BC., then progressively, in other team related educational contexts, including the […]
The quest for where you were, and where you are now—and, as we’ve asked, “what do you know?” You might just never know. I’m walking out there, walking around remote pathways wild rivers, swaying bridges, down in ancient buildings and pathways. And while I’m down there, out there, I realize, “wait, I’m lost, where am […]
Of course, as a brand person, a place-maker—as you are—we’re thinking: “if you’re not here, and not over there, then where are you? Do you know where you are? Or are you nowhere?” I’ve been talking A LOT about placemaking—and planning spaces, making places—since I’m walking around the edge of a move of one GIRVIN […]
It happens to the best of us—there’s a confident gait, the gallant stride, a bold sprint and then: there’s a stumble. It rumbles in the background—all the time—the risk of misstep. Personally, I contemplate my own faltering—and there have been many. Moves that I thought were bold and smart, but somehow I hadn’t thought-through the implications […]
Anyone can think symbolically—and likely, we all do. You see something and think, “that reminds me of a…” Living in a creative space, the memory palace of explorations, memories and meaning—the imagination swerves to new pathways, neural leaps to stringing ideas together in new ways, the brain re-circuits and new paths are created. Working earlier, […]
The world of brand extends to crime-fighting. In our history, we’ve consulted for various police agencies, patrol and security groups, building brands around protection of assets, people and their communities. It takes a particularly assertive sense of presence—something, as a brand that is, shall we say, gripping and powerful. Things go around, and they come […]
Dome Symbolism, kinæsthetic CX design strategies The View from Below and Perspectives of the Sky Rim I’ve been to three places where the architecture of the ground—the footprint of the structure—is remarkable, but the study of the built sky above it is far more compelling. Why, one would ask, is this relevant? In my experience, […]
The leap of adventure in the movement of brands, spirit, soul and destinations— the risk to get out there, go further, get farther. In a recent set of GIRVIN brand soul summits, brandquest® workshops [how we work to get somewhere new as a team-based collaborative exploration] we talked about a brand’s spirit, the nature of […]
The Nine Gates of Brand Intelligence In the long watch of the brand shepherd, steward and sentinel— it’s important to consider a 360º surveillance of territories. In a kind of mirrored language, it shall be called outlook and look out. If you visualize your brand as a landscape—a palace of dreams, a lighthouse, a mountainous […]
Spherical Design Holism for Hospitality | A Manual for Brand Placemaking Integration for Experiential Strategies and Tactics The Deployment of *Experientiality Earlier in my career, I worked on a string of projects for Disney, working with the Disney Imagineers and Park Strategists at Disneyland—designing experiences, brands and their integrated strategies in Orlando and Anaheim. It […]
A stride at Bláskógabyggð, Suðurland, Iceland I was questioning a brand client—and we were talking about the notion of soul, the spirit of the brand a human enterprise—and the mirroring of a human maker, and what they make in the journey of a brand. Everyone knows, if you know me, that the origins of the […]
I was listening to a podcast by David Duchovny the proverbial Fox Mulder of the X-files–on failure. As he notes in his overview—a summary of his podcast— “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better,” Duchovny recites to WPR’s host Doug Gordon. The finale of that quote serves as the title […]
The interplays in life, heartfulness and the courageous spirit. Thinking about the heart—and life journeys—in talking to my mother; we were walking the idea of courage. People, friends, family—they come and go—as we all do; it’s one in a string of challenges that we all face. Courage plays out as the movement—a song—in all, going […]
As you walk a journey—there are symbols in the path of your stride. As a person that has history in building places, thinking design in destinations, I tend to think about everything as a migration of symbolic content. Surely, simply, contemplate walking in a door—you were on the outside, now you’re on the inside. What […]
I was working in a team-collaborative session, a BrandQuest, Soul Summit—an innovation forum, and we were discussing the implications of attraction. As brand strategists and designers, you know about the implications of product attraction. As we put it, first there must be relevance—any needful brand has to have utility, it has a place as a […]
Deep perceptions, brand metaphors and the avian sentience. For most of my life, I’ve been a student of the birds. I admire them from the perspective of their calligraphic flight, fluttering and drifting, flourishing in elegant strokes in the air. I’ve cut them in steel, as above—a celebration of their call. And I’ve drawn them—for […]
Thinking metaphorically, there are plenty of symbolic allegories between the notion of brand building, design strategies, messaging and storytelling. You—brand designer, brand thinker, theorist, strategist—when you think of brand, the notion of a constructed and managed enterprise, integratively disposed—what comes to mind for symbolic alignments, brand + X? I think of cairns. In traveling the […]
How many times—thinking about it personally—have you been told that? Don’t touch! Hey, don’t even think about touching that! Hand’s off—not for you! Please, just look—no touching! Mostly, these days, I don’t ask, don’t look around for approvals, I just touch— unless it’s a museum, gallery or antiquities shop. Or, perhaps, a place where I’m […]
Feeling in the realm of design thinking, sensation and brand. I took some old Italian handmade paper, folded it, tore it with a bone folder, punched a hole in the head of the strip, and strung red binding thread into the opening and hung it in the trees, amidst the rain, snow and storms—salt air, […]
The Strategy and Design of Mystically-Inspired Brands In our history, we’ve had a string of opportunities to collaborate with brand partners who are different in their visioning of their enterprises— rather than focusing, for typical partners, on the notion of “how we’re going to make money,” but rather, how “our brand will be deeper, it […]
The Person, the expression of Presence and the Brand Every time that you’re working on an enterprise, the proposition of brand, it’s always about people; it’s the people that built it, those that work in and around it, and finally, the community that is in thrall to that presence, that presentation—and, that person, those people. […]
A contemplation on gratefulness Notes on the death of my father, George W. Girvin, 7.05.2024 “Why do you have skulls around you, everywhere?, I mean, you’re always wearing skull scarves, rings, all that.” Someone asked me this question. I have a long history with skulls, skull art from México, Bali, Tibet, Bhutan, other countries—and, perhaps, […]
The Quest for the New, in Remembering the Past Contemplations on brand innovation and evolution patterning I bought a new car in Portland, Oregon, and I recalled my days working down here. Time goes by. And back then, I was working with Lloyd Reynolds—and later, a swing by with David Kennedy, co-founder of Weiden+Kennedy, the […]
Brands That Live in the Shadow, But Are Full of Light Do you have a brand relationship that is, to your thinking, your personal secret— something special, marvelous, your happily loved and savored place? Is there ever a brand that lives on the quiet side, unknown, unseen by many but to a select few—and quested […]