Sensations in Experience (Design)

In working through a series of materials for a new retail concept, it was interesting to see the preponderance of materials that lusted after the slickest vocabulary of finish. Easy to clean. But, to the nature of soul in (brand) experience, even the most technical brands might have the capacity to share new dimensions of touch.

A compositing, for example, between the notion of texture and high tech touch could be blasted or bead spattered aluminum. Earlier, we built materials that utilized beaded aluminum, in which the aluminum substrate is literally “sprayed” with aluminum — bead blasting, an alternate impression of texturing, marking in. Pebbling, buffing, intentional scratching and marring and other forms add something to the measure of sensate connection.

This slight texturing says something about the idea of touch experience — it’s less to the tradition of the legacy of perfected materials, but more to materials that show some touch of the hand, of age, of human experience.

One, the presumption of the shine might be to the future, the protection against the aged. Then, the other would be that in that shine, the time stops, and it’s merely a reflection of the present.

Walking the old ways, the ideas of aging and transitioning, the old spaces, markets, temples, shop fronts, places, worn and wearing — these are beautiful things. Places — that are unforgettable. Time shreds the polish of everything. Texture resolves, and evolves — touch emerges.

There is a touch of the unnatural, to the perfectly smooth, except in the hardened skins of beetles — but even here, there is depth of touch. Polished stone, riverworn, watersmoothed — have touch. Granularity — the molecular kerning reveals a layering of contact, on contact, on touch, on revealing.

Better left unpolished, and the time shall show its truth. Maintenance, dissolved.

In following the collective efforts of Blaine Brownell’s Transmaterial examinations, there are dozens of newly invented as well as older matierals that have some implication of textured quality. Concrete, for one. Old, but new — if treated with some respectful strategy. And in the realm of the green, the idea of less than perfect applications still supports the utilization of uniquely disposed patterns and sensations.

I think about materials, as well, that might come from nature, yet distinctly manufactured. Blaine notes, for example:

Based Upon Surfaces
FEATURE, METALS — BY BLAINE BROWNELL ON APRIL 2, 2010 AT 9:00 AM

Based Upon has developed a series of multi-layered textured surfaces in metals, resins, and lacquers that are available to be specified as surface finishes within architectural and interiors projects. Taking inspiration from elements as diverse as stingray skin, laburnum leaves, or the fine lines within a human hand, Based Upon has conjured a rich and varied collection of surface features using construction-ready materials.

Based Upon Surfaces may be hung like wall paintings, although they are often used to create detailed feature walls or monolithic furniture pieces. The surfaces also make visually-stimulating ceilings or hardwearing metal floors that subtly evolve over time.
Working the metal from a liquid to a solid state, Based Upon plays with the changing state of the material, and experiments with the way the liquid metal dries, drips or settles upon a surface. The finishing process is careful, considered, and intricate. Sanding and polishing excavates the metal from beneath the earth-like surface that forms, allowing the application of traditional metal techniques.

Contact: Based Upon, London, UK.
Find more information in Transmaterial 3.
TAGS: BIOMIMETIC, FINISHES, FURNISHINGS, INTERIOR, METAL, MULTIDIMENSIONAL, PROCESS

Study, for reference, the idea of the tagging that Blaine attributes, noted above. These lend themselves to other relevant applications — biomimetic surfaces and multidimensionality, for example.

This all began in a chat with Seattle | GIRVIN Creative Director, Chie Masuyama. We were talking about plates — and her idea about a kind of textured, roughly-hewn form of service ware. But wear, might be more like it. And I was struck by the idea of thinking of brand applications — even identity — in the context of a more textured and enriched surface in design.

That took me back to working in Japan, studying Zen influenced art and architecture and considering the reflection of wabi-sabi. I’ve noted this in the past, but there are salient relevancies here.

There are characters in Japanese aesthetics that most people know to the concept of objects that are beautifully aged, the character implicit in use, authentic decay, honored “wearing out”, rustic simplicity and things that are made better, richer, and filled with more character as they “wrinkle” in their time.

WABI
SABI

The point, to applications, relates to the spirit of how the brand is experienced, what’s the story, who’s telling it, who’s listening – and finally, who cares? People are not inherently focused on the details of how a counter is perceived, or a floor, wall treatments — or brand products — unless they are intentioned to experience and sense these things. These are attributes of experience: the patterning of a brand. They as real or as relevant as a sheet of stainless steel. Or, to the contrary, the beauty of cor-ten — materials that naturally descend to new characters in the evolution of time.

Touch, is big according to PsyBlog — in any capacity of human connectedness. Touch a human, appropriately, and connectedness appear:

1. The monied touch
A well-timed touch can encourage other people to return a lost item. In one experiment, users of a phone booth who were touched were more likely to return a lost dime to an experimenter (Kleinke, 1977). The action was no more than a light touch on the arm.

People will do more than that though; people will give a bigger tip to a waitress who has touched them (Crusco & Wetzel, 1984).

2. Reaching for help, in touch
People are also more likely to provide help when touched. In one study, strangers who were touched lightly on the arm were more likely to help an experimenter pick up things they had dropped (Gueguen, 2003). The percentage of people who helped went up from 63% to 90%.

3. The compliant touch
The power of a light touch on the upper arm often extends more broadly to compliance.

In a study by Willis and Hamm (1980), participants were asked to sign a petition. While 55% of those not touched agreed to sign it, this went up to 81% of those participants touched once on the upper arm. A second study asked people to fill in a questionnaire. The same touch increased compliance from 40% to 70%.

4. Touching twice
And you can increase compliance with a second light touch on the arm.

Vaidis and Halimi-Falkowicz (2008) tried this out when asking people in the street to complete a questionnaire. Those touched twice were more likely to complete the questionnaire than those touched once. The effects were strongest when men were touched by a female surveyor.

5. The risk of touch
However, the acceptability of touch, especially between men, depends a lot on culture.

When Dolinski (2010) carried out a compliance experiment in Poland, he got quite different results for men and women. In Poland men asked to do the experimenter a favour reacted badly to a light touch on the arm. This seemed to be related to higher levels of homophobia. Women, however, still reacted positively to touch.

6. The sales touch
Unlike Poland, France has a contact culture and touching is acceptable between two men. So French researchers Erceau and Gueguen (2007) approached random men at a second-hand car market. Half were touched lightly on the arm for 1 second, the other half weren’t.

Afterwards those who had been touched rated the seller as more sincere, friendly, honest, agreeable and kind. Not bad for a 1-second touch. We can safely assume the results would have been quite different in Poland!

7. Touching commitment
You won’t be surprised to hear that men show more interest in a woman who has lightly touched them. But here’s the research anyway: Gueguen (2010) found men easily misinterpreted a light nonsexual touch on the arm as a show of sexual interest.

Perhaps more surprisingly women also responded well to a light touch on the arm when being asked for their phone number by a man in the street (Gueguen, 2007). This may be because women associated a light 1 or 2-second touch with greater dominance. (Bear in mind, though, that this research was in France again!)

8. Positioning touch
Touch communicates something vital about power relationships. Henley (1973) observed people in a major city as they went about their daily business. The people who tended to touch others (versus those being touched) were usually higher status. Generally we regard people who touch others as having more power in society (Summerhayes & Suchner, 1978).

9. Touching communication
Touch comes in many different forms and can communicate a variety of different emotions. Just how much can be communicated through touch alone is demonstrated by one remarkable study by Hertenstein et al. (2006).

Using only a touch on the forearm, participants in this study tried to communicate 12 separate emotions to another person. The receiver, despite not being able to see the toucher, or the touch itself, were pretty accurate for anger, fear, disgust, love, gratitude and sympathy. Accuracy ranged from 48% to 83%.

To put it in context, that is as good as we can do when we can see someone’s face.

10. Touching intelligence
So, if you can do all that with a touch, imagine what you could do with a massage!

Well, one study has found that it can boost your maths skills (Field, 1996). Compared with a control group, participants who received massages twice a week for 5 weeks were not only more relaxed but also did better on a maths test. Once again, witness the incredible power of touch.

The layering of touching experience — from the sensitivity to the beauty of the object, the use of sensately compelling materials, to the touching connectivity of brands, and touching, in communication: human to human.

Touch. Experience. Unforgettable.

Tim | White Plains, NY
….
GIRVIN | BUILDING BRANDSTORIES
EXPERIENCE DESIGN | THE STRATEGY OF MEMORY
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Brand, story, patterning in placemaking
design strategies in hospitality and destinations

IF THERE’S A STORY TO BE TOLD,
COULD THAT STORY BE A PAINTING?

THE GRAPHICAL PAINTING OF EMOTION, PATTERNING IN PLACE —
designing the destiny of destinations.

What is destination other than the solidification of destiny, of dream — the clarification of journey and the fate of path-making. We’ve been writing about the idea of a patterning in place-making for years; that is a strategy — and a tactical maneuver to the character of bringing of sensation — touching connectivity and perception, or “art” into a place. That could be a core graphical principle, or symbology that could be meaningfully evinced in visitors touch to aspects and attributes of the experience sequence, the brand journey, procession of process or pathway to storytelling.

An application to storytelling, hospitality and
patterning touch is here:
ART HOTEL

What:
Arte Luise Kunsthotel
Where:
Luisenstraße 19, 10117 Berlin, Germany
Cost:
A single room with a shower down the hall is just $55.
Highlights:
Markus Linnenbrink drip painting lobby (and room) gives you a 360-experience that’s way better than just gazing at a single painting.
Design draw:
Every room is created by a different artist, with unique themes.
Book it:
Arte Luise Kunsthotel reservations or email reservations@wanderlusthotel.com

Explore another hotel —
artist “directed” — Julian Schnabel,
our blog notations —
The Gramercy Park

TIM
…..
THE GRACE OF HOSPITALITY,
AND THE
STRATEGY OF IMAGINATION +
EXPERIENCE = PLACE
DESIGNING ENVIRONMENTS:
PLACES | RETAIL | RESTAURANTS
http://bit.ly/i7b7EN

Patterning brand & brand patterning –
– developing typologies, morphologies of brand experiences | Graffiti Café, Varna, Bulgaria

The nature of experiences, pattern language, visualizing layers of patterned context in place, message and ideology.

[Photography, below is from Mode | EU as well as 3 in spirit]

Sometimes, there’s a real connection between the idea, the inspiration of an enterprise — a shop, café, bookstore, pop-up environment and how that might be “designed.” If we, as thinkers about place, consider the idea of creating something as a patterning, it becomes a sign. It is a talisman to entrance and entreatment of the guest. And design, the core of its expression, relates to the sign, the signature — which is at once, personal and expressive of the quality of inherent intellectual, emotional and physical personality, and two — a discipline of recognizing ideals.

“Here is what I, my brand, my story, stand for, this is our “stance” — now, in “signing” that story, what is the telling of those that might visit me? The point is — “if you’re coming to where I am, where my story is, why would you be here? Why, visitor, would you care?“

This place, designed by Mode / EU | http://www.studiomode.eu/ begins to talk about the spirit of layered context in their notes on the environment. The positioning, Escher-esque in character, sets a striking modality between materials, patterning and brand experience.

An operational distinction, from the team: “The real challenge was to solve all functional problems related to ventilation, sound and mostly acoustics in a way subordinated to the chosen aesthetics as an interpretation of Escher work and the structure combinatory from one side and the striving to achieve this aesthetics through sparing use of materials and means of expression on the other side.“

tim
—-
…..
THE PATTERNING OF
EXPERIENCE DESIGN &
THE STRATEGY OF
IMAGINATION +
EXPERIENCE = PLACE
DESIGNING ENVIRONMENTS:
PLACES | RETAIL | RESTAURANTS
http://bit.ly/i7b7EN

The Storytelling of Place, in the Minds of the Experiencer

I just told this story recently.

I was working with a colleague, in Florida — our client, her boss, was Michael Eisner. He had a dream about a Disney place that would be a kind of learning experience — but something even slightly theatrical, a traipsing venture, akin to his memories, along with his wife of the notion of Chautauqua — a circuit of entertainments and wisdom-wanderers that might sparkle wonder in a rural road of touring. The proverbial Chautauqua circuit — a way of self learning, that has a deep legacy in the roots of american culture, which reached its closing nadir in the mid-1920’s. Eisner’s dream was the Disney Institute — and our role, to the branding of it.

Different now, than then.

But, presenting to another group in California, I was talking about the layering and detailing of experience. And at the conclusion of the talk, a woman came up and said — “I went there, to that Disney Institute place — very fancy, very nice, a big place. But what was something that I remembered, wasn’t the big things, it was the small things, the touches — little details that I’ll never forget. And it’s not that I’m an interior designer — but when I go places, I look at things. I remember noticing that there were many little things, seals, icons, devices — and they kept coming out — these icons — stories in teaching, showing themselves — ways to learn, what to learn, and finally, how to learn. It wasn’t the big, but it was the small that stitched themselves together, to lead me somewhere, to get the whole, big idea.”

Sometimes, big ideas come out of small packages —
big stories, from just
a haiku of imagery.

When I was working in Paris, I’d linked to Serge Trigano — we co-paneled at a function at the American Embassy — we talked about story, touch, place and meaning; the idea of touch-points and place-making taught me a lot. We talked about his new concept — Mama which he brainstormed and built with Philippe Starck — and is now defined as the most innovative “business hotel” in Europe. When I was working there, talking to him — we talked about his early visioning for Mama, another tier to the story here.

The point, to anything in the design of experiences — the big story, the small story, the large thinking of designed presence, to the smaller micro points of beautiful conceptions — is that it’s all of them. Mama works because there is a big story, and there are many small stories – there is a big design, and many tiny ones. Organic and osmotic, flow goes both ways — big, filtered to small, small channels to large — one intention, moves through the walls to show something wonderful in another room,
another place.

Speaking of Paris, I was thinking about design, inspirations and the crossover of the big story to the small — and the fresh eye, and storytelling, to one room, a gallery of rooms, a hotel, ViceVersa —
and Chantal Thomass.

I never thought of Chantal Thomass as an interior designer [rather, a designer of intimate apparel,] but she plays the role well: stories told, layered and lascivious, promiscuous and densely sensual. Stories told, played out in their telling — big and small — and laid bare.

The hotel is modeled on sin, all seven of them.
That is the big story, but the power will be in the layering of their smaller whispers.

Like, being a sinner, the presumption would be that you’d start your journey in “heaven.”
The lobby and reception:

You can guess the nature of these rooms?

What I’m curious about is how people experience places — how they come into one environment, SENSE — listen to the stories,
experience their telling,
and move into
that experience,
as a
co-experiencer of the
shared dream,
deep.

Deep.
Beneath.

TIM | VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA
…..

THE STRATEGY OF RE-IMAGINING
HOSPITALITY & GUEST ENGAGEMENT
DESIGNING ENVIRONMENTS FOR UNFORGETTABLE PLACES:
HOTELS |RESORTS | SPAS | RETAIL | RESTAURANTS |
SPAS + WELL CENTERS

Happiness
experience
design,
storytelling + brand =
bit.ly/17cakbT

A TOUCHING BOOK,
CONTEMPLATING 360º
IN BRAND AND EXPERIENCE
A VISUAL MEDITATION

EXPLORING THE JOURNEY;
A LEGACY OF THE SENSATE.
The human stance
of holism.

Every journey is a storytelling of sensuality —
how you sense and experience
the grand sphere
of your transsensational input.

What you recall in a journey would, of course,
be founded on what you’ve seen,
but more so there are other layers to recollection.
Gather them up.

To gather again the notations of a journey,
you’ll recall the sights you beheld,
but too —
tastes that were savored;

sounds that were heard,

touches in a place that culled the heart and heat of a moment —

and instances of scent:
a forgotten alleyway,
a long fragrance waft of forest, sea, heated sand.

While in scent, you might be challenged to
notate the structure of a scent experience: “what exactly was I smelling?”
Never mind —
it’s that you smelled
is what is important.

In the mid-late 2000s, I’d built a book of imagery and calligraphy exploring a kind of collage book, one which reached out to the realm of the sensational — design storytelling, in brand, that focused on the notion of sense
[each of them, that we, as humans, know].

I was looking at the idea of the book as a dynamic flow,
dramatic uses of type and lettered story,
in a booklet form that walked through imagery,
notations and touch points that
reached into the heart of sensing experience.

The seeing hand, tells a story of the intermixing of sensation, the synaesthetic ideal.
I see a scent.
I touch a color.
I hear a taste.

What do we hear,
what do we scent,
what do we touch,
and what do we taste?
And how would we react to it?
And in that, how might we journal that telling?

If you’d like a printed copy,
you can learn more at girvin@girvin.com;
and we can send a wire bound version, signed.

Tim Girvin | The Realm of the Senses
Limited Gift Edition
2008
–––––––

TIM | OSAKAGIRVIN
…..

G I R V I N | WOW CHARRETTES
BRAND AND EXPERIENCE
INNOVATION WORKSHOPS
CREATING STRATEGIES, PRODUCTS,
IDEAS FOR CHANGE.
http://bit.ly/vfzyEU

Could you go slow?

In the incipient need for speed
that rattles through the channels of our experience,
could that potentially
be
slowed
way
down?
To see and sense more?

Take a moment.

When I travel, working on brands around the world, I try to come into a place slow.
Going slow, slowing my way in:
slowdown —
waiting in reception, chatting with visitors.

I take it in.

I watch others coming in.
I look at the floor,
I study the ceiling,
light —
the walls,
the heat of the place.
the people moving in,
moving out.
Patterns and messages. Energy trails.

Flow, round.

Watching slower means, of course,
that you have to be on,
and in,
time.

You really have to be early — get there, get anywhere,
to absorb the energies around you.
Being early, time will tell the quieter story.
Time, told.
That can’t be done,
except superficially, quickly.

As in studying a tableau,
a tapestry,
there is a granularity in the weave that is detailed —
that requires focus and care, intentionality of review.

Speed derails
that movement
of study.
Slow down, and you settle into the milieu.

You can see
them.

The players, the people
that are there, in symphony with their environment — cacophonous or harmonic.

Those flows count for something in the analytical notations of experience design strategy — gaggles of laughter tell a story, postures and the gait of people tells another story to freedom.
Faces.
And the eyes have it.

Slow down, observe more, stride more slowly
into the framing of place, people, light, movement and energy.

Details count.

Everything tells you something,
if you’re listening.

Tim | GIRVIN Queen Anne Studios

LUXURY BRAND STORYTELLING | THE TACTICAL STANDARDS OF LUXURY
BRAND STRATEGY, DEVELOPMENT + DESIGN
Girvin Strategic Luxury: http://bit.ly/NwMv46
Girvin Brand Luxe Thinking: http://bit.ly/gTW5HZ

Exploring Retail Architecture, Metaphor and Magic.

I had a chance to observe the strategic evolutions of Nordstrom’s brand presence in my friendship with Dawn A. Clark, AIA LeedAP — lead architectural strategist and team leader in the newly evolving architectural and store design expressions of Nordstrom — most recently unveiled and launched last week in Calgary, Alberta —
the first international store of
the New Nordstrom.

Any store is a story — it’s about hundreds of people driving, as a collective team, to a strategic direction — and the tactical outcomes in selling experiences, products, relationships and holistic services.

To get there, a direction needs to be defined, and it was Dawn’s visioning, along with the Nordstrom family, her teams of designers, as well as their long-running architectural retail design consultant, Callison — to look towards a layered string of metaphors to build out a dimensional experience of Nordstrom service. A customer’s impressions will always be about the detailing of sentience in procession — the “process” of accessing the street views, building skins, doorways, entry points, multiple floor access and departmental areas. While we had no involvement, in particular, with this store, GIRVIN designed the environmental graphics theory, interior signing systems, a specialized identity and alphabet for the Nordstrom family several decades in play.

Core to Dawn’s poetical design thinking is
a dynamic reaching out to bigger allegorical plays,
in place-making.
In my conversations with her about the notion of layering experience, she has foreseen the strategy of the New Nordstrom has one of a kind of stratigraphical expression, that finds its storytelling, like the journey into a canyon of stone stratum — the measurement of time, use, and materiality in a rich sequencing of retail presence. Looking at the stone patterning of the skin of the store underlines that opening premise — a strata strategy of variegated stone panels that stagger and tier in their arrangement in a manner that suggests a stamped compression that too speaks to a lightness and sliding airiness that strikingly energizes and modernizes the spirit of the shopfront.

The logo letterspaces its telling across these sedimentary markers, an earthen-like cleavage of stone, the stratigraphical beginning of a journey within.
At entry level, a glass chamber is fretted with a ruled patterning that extends the brand rhythm of layered dimensionality

That story finds a continuation in a vast interior well — also canyon-like — a vaulted chamber that uses light and materials to layer a luminous chamber from the exterior ceiling opened sunlight, down through the floors to the first floor foundation of the entry journey of Nordstrom customers.

There are other metaphors, of trees, of clouds — a stand of trees acts as a kind of merchandising storytelling. They reach out to a set of ceiling lowering and floating clouds — large scale panels that act as gestures of closeness and containment of customers.

See below, these statements of retail retelling.

The trees.

The Clouds.

There are already a number of overviews on
the first New International Nordstrom.
Explore local and international coverage as you will.

There are, too, studies and retellings of launch procedures of a store, and story, opening to a community — how does it happen?

People empower launches —
presence is authenticating, vitalizing and enchanting.
And the Nordstrom family sees itself as the foundational base of a pyramidal geometry of greatness — they support the staff. To the strata strategy of Dawn Clark’s retail architectural metaphor, the Nordstrom family are the core on which everything is built — the earthen requisite of an ever-growing and ever-greening garden.

Dawn Clark and Pete Nordstrom,
with Tom Ackerman

Dawn Clark with Jim Pattison
and Blake Nordstrom

For the Nordstrom clan, it is one of engagement — personal reaches and connections
with people, actively answering questions.
And here, Nordstrom family members talk to team members, to guests, to customers —
which in a manner of thinking, might all be in the same threading of care.

Calgary Store Manager Sheila Wooldridge, Bruce Nordstrom and Dawn Clark

What is engagement, for a retailer?
Listening.
Watching.
Learning.
Changing.

Erik Nordstrom, answering questions about shopping bags and where to get them.

Engagement is about touch [and, in the original etymology, the grasp of a contract — or “gage,” an object of value] — with the sentience of watchfulness. And watchfulness = feelingness.
“You watch your customer and look for points of relevance” — like:
the right question
at the right moment.

Can

I

help
you

find
any
thing?

What comes through, in the mysticism and strategy of building retail storytelling experiences, a magically emotive art in architecture, Dawn and her teams have orchestrated a marvelously responsive sphere of thoughtful sensation —
innovated in
the context of poetic place, allegory and metaphor.

And in the beginning, and in the end, it’s about what you feel, and as well in psychical emotionality —
what remains unforgettable.
Memory holds.
True.
And Nordstrom:
true.

Tim | GIRVIN Calgary, Alberta
…..
G I R V I N | RETELLING RETAIL
DESIGNING THE STRATEGY OF SELLING :
BRAND STORYTELLING ENVIRONMENTS, EXPERIENCES = PLACES
http://bit.ly/rRfwAA

The Journey of Design, Place-making
and Creative Environments:
Archetypal Signage

As any designer knows, to brand and experience design, there is a link between storytelling and sequence.

A story has an ingress — a start, a mid-point, a moment of spectacle, of quietude and holistic contemplation and awareness — conclusion and egress.

From the start, you see something, the story begins, and your journey into that place will be a procession of experiences, touch points, investigations and convictions.

It works because you’re convinced that
it’s true, or
it falters as a slackened telling —
it’s inauthentic.

We’re always looking for soul, truth, journey — how then to apply that sense of soul fullness in our own environment?
What’s our truth?

Go back.

When I was in college, I was influenced by Daisetz Suzuki’s, Zen and Japanese Culture.

What I learned then, and continue to embrace, is the idea that a craft can cross planes of thinking, in the landscape of our mentality, and used to different effect — especially in experience design.

What struck me was an attitude that crosses in multiplicity — it goes from idea to implementation. A poem, a piece of pottery, a flower arrangement, the preparation of food, a pillar, a calligraphic phrasing in the temple compound — at the entry, wall treatments, coverings, floors and coloration.

That — back then, the flowering of Zen in Japan —
one might have an idea, a point of inspiration, a belief that could cross from a drawing, to poetry, to martial arts, archery, swordplay and the ineffable bushido of Samurai, to music, to art — paintings, wall treatments and scrolls, installations, gardens, principles of meditation.

I take that to heart.

In my journey, I admire that idea of the drawn energy of calligraphy, outlandishly-scaled brushes and the feverishly creative risk of drawing on old growth wood, our hand-selected, precisely-prepared timber, to be used as iconic signs, marks, tables and stand-up objects, in our new environment.

Notes:
Energy and the principle of Ch’i.
Zen.

These are power strokes — symbolic and archetypal —
strokes that emulate key principles of design —
the thread of the single line,
the whorl of journey,
the encircling world —
and the X-compass point of the crossroads,
the square of earth.

As some of you know, also during my college years [70s,]
I was into making talismans and amulets out of writing and drawings to give to friends, family and travelers.

Started then,
never stopped.

Our last installation at GIRVIN on Stewart, was one massive talisman, a centering point, an enso.

We’ll take that with us.

Talismans have a character of admixture — symbols, words, alphabets, combined to achieve something: protection, warning, health, safe travel. For me, these have been drawn on paper, painted or scribed on stone, were placed and folded in wallets, purses, sachets, and nailed to doors, pathways, kept in pockets, and sealed in wax.

Now, decades later, I still think about the idea of the drawn word as having its own transmutative magical power.

You draw something, it draws something out.
And it might draw something out of you.

You dream — and draw a “brand,” — create a new name, and it goes from being one thing, to another.

As a signer of signs, you’ve changed it.

As a namer, you have brought it to a new life.

And, as a designer, invariably — your soulful presence is immutably mixed up in that transitioning almagam.

Some believe, others do not.
And, in everything, it’s what you believe.

You, yourself, what do you believe?
And belief, inherently, is what you love.

And what you believe shall be what you hold closest to heart: believe, the word belief,
etymologically, comes
back to love.

We’re moving
here.
Painting now,
the Novo team.

So I have drawn these for our new space – to be opening signing sigils, team tables and conference sites, gateways into working areas —
and herewith, below, on selected and prepared giant slabs of old growth wood — a calligraphic rendition of talismans —
that journey:
 

The circle:
wholeness,
emptiness,
heaven,
fullness
and
containment.

The X:
crossroads,
transformation,
transmutation,
magical nexus:

The Line:
direction,
stability,
strength,
the first stroke
of the Arabic alphabet: alif,
the Rune for Ice —
stasis, frozen:

The whorl:
amazement,
the labyrinth,
journey,
pathway,
unfolding:

Jethro, our supervisor:

The serpent:
life force,
flow,
riverine,
serpentine,
exploration:

The Yard at MeyerWells, moving timber:

MeyerWells shot of the completed talismans:

Go back to where you’ve been,
and see what you, too, might find there.

Tim | Meyer Wells Green Tree Mill Timber warehouses
––––
Rethinking Beauty:
Brand Strategy & Visualization
Girvin BrandJourneys®
http://bit.ly/1sSgbOB

HOW ATTENTIVE ARE YOU?

As you think about design, and the creation of designed experiences, the point might go two ways:
how attentive are you?
and
how attentively will your experiences be received?

People come into a place in the construct of impressionistic graduation, they move place to place, moment to moment — how many impressions, how many stories can they hold, what might they embrace?
They will come into the place to see and sense what they can — first impressions count for everything as the opening, initiating stamp on memory and the unforgettability of the place.
And as they walk deeper into the spectacle,
they will hold more, or less,
depending on your
designed and detailed
attentionality.
Scent buoys the visitors, sight expands to the circumstantial — the ring of observed being, hearing envelopes the listener, taste plays, touch textures the depth of content.

So, to reflectivity in strategy, a designer of place, brand experiences, needs to think about the patterning of observation and the mindfulness of how people link moment and momentum, holistic sensation and the sensuality of impression.

You’re attentive?
How so?

How can you attentively read a place for light,
scent, poetry, taste, beauty, materiality
and the impression of
the instant and the instance?

What do you touch,
and
what touches you?

That comes to strategy and tactical unfolding — your strategy of place is founded on what creative brief — how do you find, and define, the explanation of place?

Attention, the word, comes from the same conceptual voicing as tensility — the pull, the stretch, the resilience of movement, back and forth.
Like a tendon.
And: to attend to.

A sign from
the new GIRVIN
offices.

Magnetic Beauty. Attraction. Attending. Attention.

I have a sidebar story — to my own calling to attention, more personal.
You might’ve read my telling on the Raven coven.
At 12 – and from that moment, the ravens and crows have been my callers —
“pay attention.” Every day. Every where.
Caw:
“pay attention!
Wake up!”

I heed that call, integrated,
to the work of the present era.

Who calls you?

Tim | Decatur Island Studios
…..

G I R V I N | SOCIALITY + MEDIATION
DESIGNING BRAND STORYTELLING IN HYBRID MEDIA
http://bit.ly/sJ4IjO

The Walking Senseway to
Spectacle and Sensation

I was walking the road.
And thought of the sound on my feet,
scrabbling the gravel,
sliding on some hot asphalt,
smoother wet concrete,
some metals,
the swish of grass —
then hard wood — the flooring —
and another part
of
the stride.

In that string of moments, there was a range of sensations — and in thinking about it, every layer of momentum lead to thoughts of — designing this.

What happens, and what anyone knows, is that the layering of sensations and the search for spectacle is a sequence of tiny instances that range up to the big impression. People recall the big sweep of drama, and savor the smaller nuances of detailed points of contact. As a resolutely sensual person, I walk that way —
look for the big idea and walk with close eyes to the smaller details.

That strategy works in studying
the notations of sensation in restaurants.
Or hotel.
Or retail.

Walking the street, I went to a brand that I had history with decades back —
long back, my first offices on Western Avenue, the still-standing Maritime Building, adjacent to the Ferry Terminal. There on one floor, I used to head down to the second floor, which was where the Filson workshops used to reside — I’d chat with the deskman, out front — and in back, there was a cadre of seamstresses, working the sewing machines with the hum and chatter of dozens of whirring bobbins. Canvas and punched metal, mixed with hot oil came forth, standing at the entry way, the long breeze of the loft way, heading back to the whizz of south bound I-99.

That became another location, then another.
I visited that other, just recently, down on First, just north of SB | HQ.

In the journey to walk the talk of sensational brand experience, I seek out places that play that orchestration of spectacle: sensation, small and large. I walk places to feel, I wander remote places to sense more — the way of night, and the way of day — light and dark: things can be felt, heard, tasted, seen and smelled.

It might be suggested that to drive a brand forward, you need an advocate — an envisioning ambassador.
That would be the foundation of the brand, its history and legacy.
Who gets it, who embraces it?
Alex Carelton.

It’s one thing to get it, it’s another to detail the layering of a pathway of an experiencer in a manner that the little tellings become a brand genetic legation of bridges to bring the visitor into the wild, the woods, the rivers and oceans of one’s personal recollections or dreams of adventure.

Not everyone can get out.
But everyone can dream of it.

Dream
your
dreams.

F I L S O N
E N T E R

The workshop.

Tim | GIRVIN NYC
….

WEAVING BRANDSTORIES
CROWD MIND | EXPERIENCE DESIGN | MEMORY STRATEGY
http://goo.gl/JH2UdC

Tim Girvin | G I R V I N | Strategic Branding
teams: New York City + Seattle + Bay Area, S.V., S.F. | Tokyo

Patterning brand & brand patterning –
– developing typologies, morphologies of brand experiences | Graffiti Café, Varna, Bulgaria

The nature of experiences, pattern language, visualizing layers of patterned context in place, message and ideology.

[Photography, below is from Mode | EU as well as 3 in spirit]

Sometimes, there’s a real connection between the idea, the inspiration of an enterprise — a shop, café, bookstore, pop-up environment and how that might be “designed.” If we, as thinkers about place, consider the idea of creating something as a patterning, it becomes a sign. It is a talisman to entrance and entreatment of the guest. And design, the core of its expression, relates to the sign, the signature — which is at once, personal and expressive of the quality of inherent intellectual, emotional and physical personality, and two — a discipline of recognizing ideals.

“Here is what I, my brand, my story, stand for, this is our “stance” — now, in “signing” that story, what is the telling of those that might visit me? The point is — “if you’re coming to where I am, where my story is, why would you be here? Why, visitor, would you care?“

This place, designed by Mode / EU | http://www.studiomode.eu/ begins to talk about the spirit of layered context in their notes on the environment. The positioning, Escher-esque in character, sets a striking modality between materials, patterning and brand experience.

An operational distinction, from the team: “The real challenge was to solve all functional problems related to ventilation, sound and mostly acoustics in a way subordinated to the chosen aesthetics as an interpretation of Escher work and the structure combinatory from one side and the striving to achieve this aesthetics through sparing use of materials and means of expression on the other side.“

tim
—-
…..
THE PATTERNING OF
EXPERIENCE DESIGN &
THE STRATEGY OF
IMAGINATION +
EXPERIENCE = PLACE
DESIGNING ENVIRONMENTS:
PLACES | RETAIL | RESTAURANTS
http://bit.ly/i7b7EN

Diptyque | Paris Perfumed Environments: The Design of the Fragranced Retail Experience

To every product, there is a story, to every story, there is a telling — and in every telling, there is a person that offers that tale. In this sequence of blogs, the notations have been about the nature of the selling of scent in a “place.” As I’ve noted, the idea of perfume in space is a complex and delicate affair. The challenge of course is that scent is a entirely personal notation [love it, hate it, ignore it] and the idea of an environment that might be suffused in fragrance is a serious, dislocating, a gross impingement for many.

The nature of these elements, whether shopfront, manufacturing and craft space, materials lab or high end sophistication and salon-like environments — each of these can frame that quality. We’ve written about the dynamics of scent in place — scent design and mnemonic context –ranging from the spiritual to the specially retail, retold. Others comment, Chandler Burr, for example. There are the principles of delicacy and restraint, or the emboldened super spritz of retail. Or toxic.

• There is the brand, the passionate fire — and its story.

• There is the nature and complexity of the perfumes, their vaporous nature [how do you manage it?] — what are they “saying,” what is the character of their “notation.”

• There is the spirit of the brand expression and their relationship to the founding visioning — who created the scent, art directed their making, to those characteristics, what design language might emerge?
• There is scale, light, materials, “volume,” spatial planning.

To each, their own story.

In studying the range of scent spaces — places for selling fragrance — and working on designing for them, there is a link between the brand, the story, and how that place could be envisioned.

Diptyque is a brand with a story, a kind of charming brand storytelling — and the designer of their most recent outpost, in London — Christopher Jenner‘s newest offering, which is described, by Mr. Jenner, as a kind of experiential storytelling.

His sense of brand coding and detailing is complex — and infused in the layering of Diptyque’s styling.

Interestingly, the design of an environment for the sale of scents is often better suited to the layering of story — an expression that will be richly sensate — not unlike the packaging that contains the perfume.

And, the legends holds sway, in the making of place.

TIM | PIKE PLACE STUDIOS | GIRVIN
––––
EXPERIENCE DESIGN
STRATEGIES | BRAND, STORY & SCENT
http://bit.ly/fqHmEd

The Storytelling of Place, in the Minds of the Experiencer

I just told this story recently.

I was working with a colleague, in Florida — our client, her boss, was Michael Eisner. He had a dream about a Disney place that would be a kind of learning experience — but something even slightly theatrical, a traipsing venture, akin to his memories, along with his wife of the notion of Chautauqua — a circuit of entertainments and wisdom-wanderers that might sparkle wonder in a rural road of touring. The proverbial Chautauqua circuit — a way of self learning, that has a deep legacy in the roots of american culture, which reached its closing nadir in the mid-1920’s. Eisner’s dream was the Disney Institute — and our role, to the branding of it.

Different now, than then.

But, presenting to another group in California, I was talking about the layering and detailing of experience. And at the conclusion of the talk, a woman came up and said — “I went there, to that Disney Institute place — very fancy, very nice, a big place. But what was something that I remembered, wasn’t the big things, it was the small things, the touches — little details that I’ll never forget. And it’s not that I’m an interior designer — but when I go places, I look at things. I remember noticing that there were many little things, seals, icons, devices — and they kept coming out — these icons — stories in teaching, showing themselves — ways to learn, what to learn, and finally, how to learn. It wasn’t the big, but it was the small that stitched themselves together, to lead me somewhere, to get the whole, big idea.”

Sometimes, big ideas come out of small packages —
big stories, from just
a haiku of imagery.

When I was working in Paris, I’d linked to Serge Trigano — we co-paneled at a function at the American Embassy — we talked about story, touch, place and meaning; the idea of touch-points and place-making taught me a lot. We talked about his new concept — Mama which he brainstormed and built with Philippe Starck — and is now defined as the most innovative “business hotel” in Europe. When I was working there, talking to him — we talked about his early visioning for Mama, another tier to the story here.

The point, to anything in the design of experiences — the big story, the small story, the large thinking of designed presence, to the smaller micro points of beautiful conceptions — is that it’s all of them. Mama works because there is a big story, and there are many small stories – there is a big design, and many tiny ones. Organic and osmotic, flow goes both ways — big, filtered to small, small channels to large — one intention, moves through the walls to show something wonderful in another room,
another place.

Speaking of Paris, I was thinking about design, inspirations and the crossover of the big story to the small — and the fresh eye, and storytelling, to one room, a gallery of rooms, a hotel, ViceVersa —
and Chantal Thomass.

I never thought of Chantal Thomass as an interior designer [rather, a designer of intimate apparel,] but she plays the role well: stories told, layered and lascivious, promiscuous and densely sensual. Stories told, played out in their telling — big and small — and laid bare.

The hotel is modeled on sin, all seven of them.
That is the big story, but the power will be in the layering of their smaller whispers.

Like, being a sinner, the presumption would be that you’d start your journey in “heaven.”
The lobby and reception:

You can guess the nature of these rooms?

What I’m curious about is how people experience places — how they come into one environment, SENSE — listen to the stories,
experience their telling,
and move into
that experience,
as a
co-experiencer of the
shared dream,
deep.

Deep.
Beneath.

TIM | VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA
…..

THE STRATEGY OF RE-IMAGINING
HOSPITALITY & GUEST ENGAGEMENT
DESIGNING ENVIRONMENTS FOR UNFORGETTABLE PLACES:
HOTELS |RESORTS | SPAS | RETAIL | RESTAURANTS |
SPAS + WELL CENTERS

Happiness
experience
design,
storytelling + brand =
bit.ly/17cakbT

A TOUCHING BOOK,
CONTEMPLATING 360º
IN BRAND AND EXPERIENCE
A VISUAL MEDITATION

EXPLORING THE JOURNEY;
A LEGACY OF THE SENSATE.
The human stance
of holism.

Every journey is a storytelling of sensuality —
how you sense and experience
the grand sphere
of your transsensational input.

What you recall in a journey would, of course,
be founded on what you’ve seen,
but more so there are other layers to recollection.
Gather them up.

To gather again the notations of a journey,
you’ll recall the sights you beheld,
but too —
tastes that were savored;

sounds that were heard,

touches in a place that culled the heart and heat of a moment —

and instances of scent:
a forgotten alleyway,
a long fragrance waft of forest, sea, heated sand.

While in scent, you might be challenged to
notate the structure of a scent experience: “what exactly was I smelling?”
Never mind —
it’s that you smelled
is what is important.

In the mid-late 2000s, I’d built a book of imagery and calligraphy exploring a kind of collage book, one which reached out to the realm of the sensational — design storytelling, in brand, that focused on the notion of sense
[each of them, that we, as humans, know].

I was looking at the idea of the book as a dynamic flow,
dramatic uses of type and lettered story,
in a booklet form that walked through imagery,
notations and touch points that
reached into the heart of sensing experience.

The seeing hand, tells a story of the intermixing of sensation, the synaesthetic ideal.
I see a scent.
I touch a color.
I hear a taste.

What do we hear,
what do we scent,
what do we touch,
and what do we taste?
And how would we react to it?
And in that, how might we journal that telling?

If you’d like a printed copy,
you can learn more at girvin@girvin.com;
and we can send a wire bound version, signed.

Tim Girvin | The Realm of the Senses
Limited Gift Edition
2008
–––––––

TIM | OSAKAGIRVIN
…..

G I R V I N | WOW CHARRETTES
BRAND AND EXPERIENCE
INNOVATION WORKSHOPS
CREATING STRATEGIES, PRODUCTS,
IDEAS FOR CHANGE.
http://bit.ly/vfzyEU

Could you go slow?

In the incipient need for speed
that rattles through the channels of our experience,
could that potentially
be
slowed
way
down?
To see and sense more?

Take a moment.

When I travel, working on brands around the world, I try to come into a place slow.
Going slow, slowing my way in:
slowdown —
waiting in reception, chatting with visitors.

I take it in.

I watch others coming in.
I look at the floor,
I study the ceiling,
light —
the walls,
the heat of the place.
the people moving in,
moving out.
Patterns and messages. Energy trails.

Flow, round.

Watching slower means, of course,
that you have to be on,
and in,
time.

You really have to be early — get there, get anywhere,
to absorb the energies around you.
Being early, time will tell the quieter story.
Time, told.
That can’t be done,
except superficially, quickly.

As in studying a tableau,
a tapestry,
there is a granularity in the weave that is detailed —
that requires focus and care, intentionality of review.

Speed derails
that movement
of study.
Slow down, and you settle into the milieu.

You can see
them.

The players, the people
that are there, in symphony with their environment — cacophonous or harmonic.

Those flows count for something in the analytical notations of experience design strategy — gaggles of laughter tell a story, postures and the gait of people tells another story to freedom.
Faces.
And the eyes have it.

Slow down, observe more, stride more slowly
into the framing of place, people, light, movement and energy.

Details count.

Everything tells you something,
if you’re listening.

Tim | GIRVIN Queen Anne Studios

LUXURY BRAND STORYTELLING | THE TACTICAL STANDARDS OF LUXURY
BRAND STRATEGY, DEVELOPMENT + DESIGN
Girvin Strategic Luxury: http://bit.ly/NwMv46
Girvin Brand Luxe Thinking: http://bit.ly/gTW5HZ

Exploring Retail Architecture, Metaphor and Magic.

I had a chance to observe the strategic evolutions of Nordstrom’s brand presence in my friendship with Dawn A. Clark, AIA LeedAP — lead architectural strategist and team leader in the newly evolving architectural and store design expressions of Nordstrom — most recently unveiled and launched last week in Calgary, Alberta —
the first international store of
the New Nordstrom.

Any store is a story — it’s about hundreds of people driving, as a collective team, to a strategic direction — and the tactical outcomes in selling experiences, products, relationships and holistic services.

To get there, a direction needs to be defined, and it was Dawn’s visioning, along with the Nordstrom family, her teams of designers, as well as their long-running architectural retail design consultant, Callison — to look towards a layered string of metaphors to build out a dimensional experience of Nordstrom service. A customer’s impressions will always be about the detailing of sentience in procession — the “process” of accessing the street views, building skins, doorways, entry points, multiple floor access and departmental areas. While we had no involvement, in particular, with this store, GIRVIN designed the environmental graphics theory, interior signing systems, a specialized identity and alphabet for the Nordstrom family several decades in play.

Core to Dawn’s poetical design thinking is
a dynamic reaching out to bigger allegorical plays,
in place-making.
In my conversations with her about the notion of layering experience, she has foreseen the strategy of the New Nordstrom has one of a kind of stratigraphical expression, that finds its storytelling, like the journey into a canyon of stone stratum — the measurement of time, use, and materiality in a rich sequencing of retail presence. Looking at the stone patterning of the skin of the store underlines that opening premise — a strata strategy of variegated stone panels that stagger and tier in their arrangement in a manner that suggests a stamped compression that too speaks to a lightness and sliding airiness that strikingly energizes and modernizes the spirit of the shopfront.

The logo letterspaces its telling across these sedimentary markers, an earthen-like cleavage of stone, the stratigraphical beginning of a journey within.
At entry level, a glass chamber is fretted with a ruled patterning that extends the brand rhythm of layered dimensionality

That story finds a continuation in a vast interior well — also canyon-like — a vaulted chamber that uses light and materials to layer a luminous chamber from the exterior ceiling opened sunlight, down through the floors to the first floor foundation of the entry journey of Nordstrom customers.

There are other metaphors, of trees, of clouds — a stand of trees acts as a kind of merchandising storytelling. They reach out to a set of ceiling lowering and floating clouds — large scale panels that act as gestures of closeness and containment of customers.

See below, these statements of retail retelling.

The trees.

The Clouds.

There are already a number of overviews on
the first New International Nordstrom.
Explore local and international coverage as you will.

There are, too, studies and retellings of launch procedures of a store, and story, opening to a community — how does it happen?

People empower launches —
presence is authenticating, vitalizing and enchanting.
And the Nordstrom family sees itself as the foundational base of a pyramidal geometry of greatness — they support the staff. To the strata strategy of Dawn Clark’s retail architectural metaphor, the Nordstrom family are the core on which everything is built — the earthen requisite of an ever-growing and ever-greening garden.

Dawn Clark and Pete Nordstrom,
with Tom Ackerman

Dawn Clark with Jim Pattison
and Blake Nordstrom

For the Nordstrom clan, it is one of engagement — personal reaches and connections
with people, actively answering questions.
And here, Nordstrom family members talk to team members, to guests, to customers —
which in a manner of thinking, might all be in the same threading of care.

Calgary Store Manager Sheila Wooldridge, Bruce Nordstrom and Dawn Clark

What is engagement, for a retailer?
Listening.
Watching.
Learning.
Changing.

Erik Nordstrom, answering questions about shopping bags and where to get them.

Engagement is about touch [and, in the original etymology, the grasp of a contract — or “gage,” an object of value] — with the sentience of watchfulness. And watchfulness = feelingness.
“You watch your customer and look for points of relevance” — like:
the right question
at the right moment.

Can

I

help
you

find
any
thing?

What comes through, in the mysticism and strategy of building retail storytelling experiences, a magically emotive art in architecture, Dawn and her teams have orchestrated a marvelously responsive sphere of thoughtful sensation —
innovated in
the context of poetic place, allegory and metaphor.

And in the beginning, and in the end, it’s about what you feel, and as well in psychical emotionality —
what remains unforgettable.
Memory holds.
True.
And Nordstrom:
true.

Tim | GIRVIN Calgary, Alberta
…..
G I R V I N | RETELLING RETAIL
DESIGNING THE STRATEGY OF SELLING :
BRAND STORYTELLING ENVIRONMENTS, EXPERIENCES = PLACES
http://bit.ly/rRfwAA

The Journey of Design, Place-making
and Creative Environments:
Archetypal Signage

As any designer knows, to brand and experience design, there is a link between storytelling and sequence.

A story has an ingress — a start, a mid-point, a moment of spectacle, of quietude and holistic contemplation and awareness — conclusion and egress.

From the start, you see something, the story begins, and your journey into that place will be a procession of experiences, touch points, investigations and convictions.

It works because you’re convinced that
it’s true, or
it falters as a slackened telling —
it’s inauthentic.

We’re always looking for soul, truth, journey — how then to apply that sense of soul fullness in our own environment?
What’s our truth?

Go back.

When I was in college, I was influenced by Daisetz Suzuki’s, Zen and Japanese Culture.

What I learned then, and continue to embrace, is the idea that a craft can cross planes of thinking, in the landscape of our mentality, and used to different effect — especially in experience design.

What struck me was an attitude that crosses in multiplicity — it goes from idea to implementation. A poem, a piece of pottery, a flower arrangement, the preparation of food, a pillar, a calligraphic phrasing in the temple compound — at the entry, wall treatments, coverings, floors and coloration.

That — back then, the flowering of Zen in Japan —
one might have an idea, a point of inspiration, a belief that could cross from a drawing, to poetry, to martial arts, archery, swordplay and the ineffable bushido of Samurai, to music, to art — paintings, wall treatments and scrolls, installations, gardens, principles of meditation.

I take that to heart.

In my journey, I admire that idea of the drawn energy of calligraphy, outlandishly-scaled brushes and the feverishly creative risk of drawing on old growth wood, our hand-selected, precisely-prepared timber, to be used as iconic signs, marks, tables and stand-up objects, in our new environment.

Notes:
Energy and the principle of Ch’i.
Zen.

These are power strokes — symbolic and archetypal —
strokes that emulate key principles of design —
the thread of the single line,
the whorl of journey,
the encircling world —
and the X-compass point of the crossroads,
the square of earth.

As some of you know, also during my college years [70s,]
I was into making talismans and amulets out of writing and drawings to give to friends, family and travelers.

Started then,
never stopped.

Our last installation at GIRVIN on Stewart, was one massive talisman, a centering point, an enso.

We’ll take that with us.

Talismans have a character of admixture — symbols, words, alphabets, combined to achieve something: protection, warning, health, safe travel. For me, these have been drawn on paper, painted or scribed on stone, were placed and folded in wallets, purses, sachets, and nailed to doors, pathways, kept in pockets, and sealed in wax.

Now, decades later, I still think about the idea of the drawn word as having its own transmutative magical power.

You draw something, it draws something out.
And it might draw something out of you.

You dream — and draw a “brand,” — create a new name, and it goes from being one thing, to another.

As a signer of signs, you’ve changed it.

As a namer, you have brought it to a new life.

And, as a designer, invariably — your soulful presence is immutably mixed up in that transitioning almagam.

Some believe, others do not.
And, in everything, it’s what you believe.

You, yourself, what do you believe?
And belief, inherently, is what you love.

And what you believe shall be what you hold closest to heart: believe, the word belief,
etymologically, comes
back to love.

We’re moving
here.
Painting now,
the Novo team.

So I have drawn these for our new space – to be opening signing sigils, team tables and conference sites, gateways into working areas —
and herewith, below, on selected and prepared giant slabs of old growth wood — a calligraphic rendition of talismans —
that journey:
 

The circle:
wholeness,
emptiness,
heaven,
fullness
and
containment.

The X:
crossroads,
transformation,
transmutation,
magical nexus:

The Line:
direction,
stability,
strength,
the first stroke
of the Arabic alphabet: alif,
the Rune for Ice —
stasis, frozen:

The whorl:
amazement,
the labyrinth,
journey,
pathway,
unfolding:

Jethro, our supervisor:

The serpent:
life force,
flow,
riverine,
serpentine,
exploration:

The Yard at MeyerWells, moving timber:

MeyerWells shot of the completed talismans:

Go back to where you’ve been,
and see what you, too, might find there.

Tim | Meyer Wells Green Tree Mill Timber warehouses
––––
Rethinking Beauty:
Brand Strategy & Visualization
Girvin BrandJourneys®
http://bit.ly/1sSgbOB

HOW ATTENTIVE ARE YOU?

As you think about design, and the creation of designed experiences, the point might go two ways:
how attentive are you?
and
how attentively will your experiences be received?

People come into a place in the construct of impressionistic graduation, they move place to place, moment to moment — how many impressions, how many stories can they hold, what might they embrace?
They will come into the place to see and sense what they can — first impressions count for everything as the opening, initiating stamp on memory and the unforgettability of the place.
And as they walk deeper into the spectacle,
they will hold more, or less,
depending on your
designed and detailed
attentionality.
Scent buoys the visitors, sight expands to the circumstantial — the ring of observed being, hearing envelopes the listener, taste plays, touch textures the depth of content.

So, to reflectivity in strategy, a designer of place, brand experiences, needs to think about the patterning of observation and the mindfulness of how people link moment and momentum, holistic sensation and the sensuality of impression.

You’re attentive?
How so?

How can you attentively read a place for light,
scent, poetry, taste, beauty, materiality
and the impression of
the instant and the instance?

What do you touch,
and
what touches you?

That comes to strategy and tactical unfolding — your strategy of place is founded on what creative brief — how do you find, and define, the explanation of place?

Attention, the word, comes from the same conceptual voicing as tensility — the pull, the stretch, the resilience of movement, back and forth.
Like a tendon.
And: to attend to.

A sign from
the new GIRVIN
offices.

Magnetic Beauty. Attraction. Attending. Attention.

I have a sidebar story — to my own calling to attention, more personal.
You might’ve read my telling on the Raven coven.
At 12 – and from that moment, the ravens and crows have been my callers —
“pay attention.” Every day. Every where.
Caw:
“pay attention!
Wake up!”

I heed that call, integrated,
to the work of the present era.

Who calls you?

Tim | Decatur Island Studios
…..

G I R V I N | SOCIALITY + MEDIATION
DESIGNING BRAND STORYTELLING IN HYBRID MEDIA
http://bit.ly/sJ4IjO

The Walking Senseway to
Spectacle and Sensation

I was walking the road.
And thought of the sound on my feet,
scrabbling the gravel,
sliding on some hot asphalt,
smoother wet concrete,
some metals,
the swish of grass —
then hard wood — the flooring —
and another part
of
the stride.

In that string of moments, there was a range of sensations — and in thinking about it, every layer of momentum lead to thoughts of — designing this.

What happens, and what anyone knows, is that the layering of sensations and the search for spectacle is a sequence of tiny instances that range up to the big impression. People recall the big sweep of drama, and savor the smaller nuances of detailed points of contact. As a resolutely sensual person, I walk that way —
look for the big idea and walk with close eyes to the smaller details.

That strategy works in studying
the notations of sensation in restaurants.
Or hotel.
Or retail.

Walking the street, I went to a brand that I had history with decades back —
long back, my first offices on Western Avenue, the still-standing Maritime Building, adjacent to the Ferry Terminal. There on one floor, I used to head down to the second floor, which was where the Filson workshops used to reside — I’d chat with the deskman, out front — and in back, there was a cadre of seamstresses, working the sewing machines with the hum and chatter of dozens of whirring bobbins. Canvas and punched metal, mixed with hot oil came forth, standing at the entry way, the long breeze of the loft way, heading back to the whizz of south bound I-99.

That became another location, then another.
I visited that other, just recently, down on First, just north of SB | HQ.

In the journey to walk the talk of sensational brand experience, I seek out places that play that orchestration of spectacle: sensation, small and large. I walk places to feel, I wander remote places to sense more — the way of night, and the way of day — light and dark: things can be felt, heard, tasted, seen and smelled.

It might be suggested that to drive a brand forward, you need an advocate — an envisioning ambassador.
That would be the foundation of the brand, its history and legacy.
Who gets it, who embraces it?
Alex Carelton.

It’s one thing to get it, it’s another to detail the layering of a pathway of an experiencer in a manner that the little tellings become a brand genetic legation of bridges to bring the visitor into the wild, the woods, the rivers and oceans of one’s personal recollections or dreams of adventure.

Not everyone can get out.
But everyone can dream of it.

Dream
your
dreams.

F I L S O N
E N T E R

The workshop.

Tim | GIRVIN NYC
….

WEAVING BRANDSTORIES
CROWD MIND | EXPERIENCE DESIGN | MEMORY STRATEGY
http://goo.gl/JH2UdC

Tim Girvin | G I R V I N | Strategic Branding
teams: New York City + Seattle + Bay Area, S.V., S.F. | Tokyo

ANALYZING HOW [WELL] IT WORKS


The spiral of brand experience design:
Girvin’s red thread of connective analyses

The Analysis of the Context of
Place-Making and Food Design

Working for decades on the propositions of food experience — from luxury dining to kiosk service, fast casual to white tablecloth, Girvin’s legacy of searching for the engagement tools for guests, builds a certain set of tools in analyzing the success of brand storytelling and experiential relationships in dining design. You need to walk it, touch it, taste it, talk it.

That would be, what is the procession, the walk, how’s that work?

That would be tactility —
the touch: feet-walking, hand-touching —

what’s it feel like, holistically?

Taste and scent, that’s the beginning and the ending of the story — win here, you will likely win everywhere else.

Talk it? What do we [and they] have to say? The issue will be culture — how is the story told, what is the character of the attitude of the brand?

Fast casual: here — this case study in play — sets the foundation for consideration. There’s a distinction, between the conceptions of fast casual and QSR — quick serve. And the processing suggests dollars spent, interior character and brand environment.

Foundational rules of the dining experience strategy — QSR, fast casual, or upscale potential environments

The basic rules of the road apply across the field of experience planning

• Food will be, and always will be: everything. Without great food, the restaurant will be building an audience of unstable relationships. The community won’t be connected. Embracement counts.
Embracement is holding.

• Sequences of action — the real procession, walking in, being served, leaving happy — this is fundamental, but oftentimes ignored. How does that work?

• The core standards of the connection between the team and guest is another proposition. How was that sequence managed — what’s the greeting, what’s the differentiation, what is, where is, the sincerity?

• Care — who cares, really? The idea of care is a permeation that needs to stretch everywhere in the experience planning — but how is it managed?

• The sense of place — so much of fast casual (which might be anything from a Starbucks to Chipotle relates to pricing and time — budgeting per serve are roughly $7.50 — 11.00. The items can be less, but the potential looks for multiple turns in the day.

How might this be analyzed? Sequentially. In our expertise, the idea of sorting process and moments could be synchronized to a step by step, instant to instant, the dance of the practice. And practice, it is — makes perfect.

In analyzing literally dozens of fast casual experiences, there are learnings:

• Brand is crucial — it’s obvious what this place is. Considered and comprehensive?

• Story is comprehensible — tell the consumer, fast, what the story is.

• Process is fluent — you can get into the place, through the server line and orders shall be resolved efficiently.

• If they can stay, how long — timing the sequence, for stay, for work, the third place, respite, meal and out, drink and connect. Has this been designed?

• The market — knowing your market, the competition thoroughly, who’s winning and how they are evolving? Asking this question — are you up to speed?

Defining questions — and setting the path
We define: establishing Brand benchmarks will establish consistency and clarity, which is important in times of growth, when money is being spent and decisions are crucial. A consistent Brand, coupled with individual location distinction, appears stronger to consumers and investors, ensuring confidence to buy.

EXTENDING THE BRAND FOUNDATION: CORPORATE BUSINESS PAPERS
Standardized system for all corporate documents including: business card, letterhead, #10 envelope, large size envelope, mailing label and forms such as invoices and Word templates for letterhead. Building digital forms for email is another cohesion to brand lineage.

WHAT’S IN FRONT SHOULD BE CONSISTENT:
BACK OF HOUSE COLLATERAL
Employee schedule, employment application, inventory and other applicable forms.

BEING A HOLISTIC MESSAGE:
Tight packaging: MEDIA KIT*
Brochure, delivery system, designed one-sheets.

LINKING CONTENT AND TRAINING TOOLS:
“I can tell the story, I know the story, I am the story.”
EMPLOYEE TRAINING MATERIALS*
New trainee folder, unique welcome gift, “For a Friend” coupon.
Designed one-sheets w/ training information. Brochures and overview.
*Could be combined into one team kit.

INTEGRATION OF STYLISTIC INTENT: BRAND STYLE GUIDE
The Brand style guide is a manual for creative and marketing professionals, including vendors, for optimal consistency across a variety of applications. This guide includes configuration and exact specifications for use of the Brand Identity, including “do’s and don’t’s”; use of color and specifications;
type hierarchy and layout guidelines; guidelines for additional elements such as graphic and photographic styles. An expected deliverable is a reference manual in book and digital form.

OWNING THE LOOK: ILLUSTRATION STYLE
An expected scope of work includes analyzing current and previous illustration styles and defining a consistent style that is most suitable to the Brand, reasonably moderate in budgeting and adaptable to various illustrators.

UNDERSTANDING THE MINDSET: THE REASONING FOR INVOLVEMENT
A few of the core reasons why a consumer goes out to eat:
Hungry (for new or reliably predictable experiences)
There is nothing to eat in the house (speed and convenience)
It’s routine (the habitual relationship)
Going with others (an ongoing action)
Meeting others (the nexus)

THE RUDIMENTS OF ANALYSES
It’s important to bear in mind that the process for sequencing brand experience is one of complex detailing — these graphical discussions merely pinpoint the opening arcs of each phase of study. There are myriad points of connection to a community relationship and they’re not only inside the walls of the enterprise, but to the employees and their families, and the importance of the surrounding community.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

A PRELIMINARY STRATEGIC OVERVIEW
Creating a cartography or mapping of restaurant experiences — the complexity of engagements is a good foundational checklist — designing this as a kind of gathering of all the possibilities of encounters, perceptions and points of brand management builds the basic layer for how to see what potentials there could be in any study, for any type of restaurant. For this grid, our fast casual circling — the red thread of brand embracement — the centerpoint of the symbolic allegory is a “burger” icon (for the basic offering of a one client relationship that used this methodology.)

CONSIDERING THE STAGGERING OF EXPERIENCE TOUCHPOINTS
The process of connecting, or disconnecting with guests is made on many layers of contact — break one and you might break them all. One grand experience can be quickly dispelled in a break of the rightful sequence of attracting actions. It’s always that challenge, attention must be paid to the intention of the brand and its offering.

THE EQUATION OF GOODNESS
We’ve explored the idea of goodness — this reaches to the notion of good experiences, but as well the value of the guest relationship and finally how that equates to the community — doing right, doing good is a one on one experience, as well as one — your brand — to community.

X MARKS THE TOUCHPOINT
In this sequence of images, the idea of the touchpoint is something that is defined as the x – marking the spot of the sequence of connections in procession — the literal process for how guests encounter the presence of your brand. Brand presence, to Girvin’s thinking, relates to “being present,” awakened and alive — vitally “on.”

THE PROCESS OF ENGAGEMENT
Engagement, embracement, envelopment in the brand experience is something that isn’t just inside the doors — it can begin blocks away as messaging potentials present themselves. Each one of these “ripples in the ring” should be considered — point: signing, point: drivethrough, point: standard, point: entry, point: merchandising and window messaging. All synchronous — casually observed by the guest in transition, but powerful in its holistic mechanism.

THE ENTRY SEQUENCING
The entry is the beginnings of the close encounter, team members come into proximity, small messaging begins to build, as well as enlarged layers of storytelling. Everything that the brand does is about telling a story — greater, or smaller, a detail in the movement of the guest into the closest proximal relationship to brand place. Everything is a story — and the question relates: “what’s your story — and how will you be telling it?”

THE INTERNAL PROCESSION
Lines happen — volume suggests action, so the play of the line and parlaying that as a decision making process will be important. But will this sequencing might be only about storytelling the product, or building the layering of the brand experience — in that storytelling. While classic fast casual strategy mostly suggests raw product portrayal, there are other potentials — history, heritage imagery, ideals and attributes, community involvement, vendors and relationships — the scene could be rife with additives. Build strategically, that sequence — think Disney, Universal Studios or other entertainments. Small, or large, the messaging can count — especially if people are waiting.

THE COUNTER ENCOUNTER
The propositions of face to face connectivity are priceless — and they can account for the win, or the lose, of the entire relationship. Anyone who’s ever had an experience in a restaurant, inside or out, employee or guest will know this intimately. If this could be won — and practiced happily — everyone succeeds. But that’s only part (and a very significant part) of the engagement — more messaging ensues and the dramatic, powerfully accessible, comprehensibly appetizing this process is, the better. In our experience, the notion of dramatic photography isn’t the only measure of success — fast clarity, careful messaging and explanation is just as vital.

INTERNAL CIRCULATION
Up and about, guests circulate — what is the expanse of the brand storytelling? Experience counts just before, and just after the meal — exploring the place, there can be added layers of messaging to build on the depth of the story. People will read if you can offer dimensionality of brand storytelling and layering. It’s not the same old — it’s a song witih different melodies — catching the drift of the tune builds expansiveness of experience detailing.

THE SENSE OF THE TABLE
A sight for hungry eyes — food, packaged, branded messaging, storytelling on the wrap, table amendments — each can offer the touch of another point of envelopment. That point — the “containment” is the same as embracement — the guest is enveloped in the meal, the taste, scent, sight, touch, sound of that prize — it’s why they are fundamentally here.

ANALYZING THE GATHERING OF POTENTIALS
As noted in the beginnings, the positives and negatives of the experience can be shining wonders to grand times — any moment, potentially disarmed by a wayward, brand “off” encounter. It all adds up, or down — it’s up to the management of the brand to make it sing.

THE CLOSURE
What’s the good bye?

THE SOUL OF PLACE
In the opening imagery, we offered the notion of the red thread of experience layering — but any brand will start with the soul of its foundation — that could be the visioning of the founder, or it could be a team envisioned dream. But the soulful nature of any proposition shall speak to the potency of nurturing the cult and enculturation of those values. There needs to be a tenet of intention, which builds attention and catalyzes attraction.

TIM | West Loop, Chicago, IL
––––
CREATING BRANDS THAT ARE LOVED:
http://bit.ly/h9kJdW