SPIRITSP[L]ACE

WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN THAT IS THE MOST PROFOUNDLY POWERFUL, SPIRITUALLY RIVEN, MAGNETICALLY CAPTIVATING PLACE?

WHAT’S UNFORGETTABLE?

Some know about my experiences, early on, bringing artist / designer James Turrell to Seattle, as a COCA board member, [#makeamericacreateagain].

This was during the 80s, a widely-visited installation in an abandoned building in Pioneer Square. It was a team of four of us that pulled the plan, the money, together.

It had to do with what could be seen and sensed, and what could not — the quasi-reality of perceived luminosity in grasping spatial context.

After all, we designed a silkscreened posters to call a string of events to mind — talks, placemaking, exhibits.

It led me to a kind of lifelong study of Turrell’s work, and a handful of other artists building site-based experiences of art and light, perception, vacuity, opacity, translucency.

Light-designed hospitality?

You know Turrell, right?
And during that selfsame time — mid-eighties, we had brought Robert Irwin, a Turrell compatriot and designer of mischievous places, made,
to speak in Seattle.
His book, a life-changer for artists.

My notes, wandering, here.

Explore this, when
you have a moment.

From Matisse to Turrell, 8 Artists Who Designed Transcendent Chapels
BY ALEXANDRA ALEXA

The point is, if you’re making something,
“what’s the point?”

Why are you doing what you’re doing?
Is there something more?
Surely,
there
is
.

Tim | GIRVINWATERFRONT
––––
Rethinking Beauty:
Brand Strategy & Visualization
Girvin BrandJourneys®
http://bit.ly/1sSgbOB

Thinking processes for experience
design strategy and deployment

During the 1990-early 2000s, I spent time working with the Disney Imagineers and Park Strategists at Disneyland — designing experiences, brands and their integrated strategies in Orlando and Anaheim. As well, during that time, we worked with Steve and Elaine Wynn on Bellagio and their teams and properties. All sides, I learned a lot about design thinking — the planning of holistic renderings of journey, queue, storytelling, graphical elements — and how it all fits together.

When you consider it, sensational design — designing for the senses — restaurants are the best platform for complex, integrated holistic engagement.

These studies range from intimate and close-in, managed entertainment affairs and queue-based experiences, to guest enchantment at sit-down as well as wandering explorers of varied food experience options.

Many times in my career, I was drawn into realms of brand work and design, that I was curious about, but didn’t have much experience. I wandered in.

B R A N D D R I V E
What that range of design learning taught me — specific to dining offerings in design, strategy and procession, is that a restaurant visionary will need to have a clear visioning about the core distinction of the proposition of value and exchange — coupled in the passion of what drives that person, the restaurant’s leadership and their teams. Leadership will be about participation and involvement. That’s a key — who is there, managing the team, who inspires, who fires the drive of the brand?

WHAT ABOUT YOU?
What are your key offers answering the question as to why a person would like to be there — this place that you are making? Simple question — it’s the why.
Why should we do this?
What difference are we offering?
More seats? Special foods? Preparations? Environment? Spectacle?

Everything comes back to
intention, which drives attention and attraction.
People are enticed to an offering —
they come, they explore, they savor, they stay, they go.

We call it
the E’s:

They are
enchanted —
the song, the chant, of the offering is a compelling expression, magnetism happens.
The drawing nigh begins.

There is
engagement.
After a sense of magnetism and vibrational attraction
[“I like the vibe of this place, feels good, I get it…”]
There is commitment — the story will be shared.

There is
embracement.
There is the offer of a gift and there is a recipient of that gift. And a price might be paid for that exchange.
The equation comes to:
what is your intention?
And what is your gift?

We think of journeys as pathways and labyrinths —
which is a sequencing, a spiral of brand experience design:
GIRVIN’s red thread of connective analyses —
that is, if you’re thinking about creating a restaurant or any type of brand experience offering, think deep first.

Go soul.

Go spirit.

Then plan
and build. All builds start with a dream. They must have that foundational mysticism: the dream, the idea[l], the vision and out there — the actualization.

Working for years on the propositions of food experience — from luxury dining to kiosk service, fast casual to white tablecloth, we have a legacy of searching for the engagement tools for guests, building in a certain set of experiential devices in analyzing the success of brand storytelling and experiencer relationships in dining design.

What kind of restaurant could you be?

You could start simple, faster, more accelerated service: fast casual, as noted below —this journeying and watch-fullness sets the foundation for consideration of your ideal.

Or, go complex.

Or go towards some other admixture.

But go deep,
to passion,
your deepest commitment,
the drive.

If you’re creating a restaurant, you’ll need to clarify and respond to this question: are you building a proposition of something quick and accessible, or a more complex table service?

Let’s start with one, the notion of a speedier brand storytelling. There’s a distinction, between the conceptions of fast casual [FCR] and QSR — quick serve restauarants. And the processing purports formulae to dollars spent, interior character and brand environment.

Go fast: 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 shall be: everything. Without great food, the restaurant will be building an audience of unstable relationships. The community won’t be connected. No high-flying design will save a restaurant without great product. Money aside, the relationship to customers will be superficial and weak.

• Sequences of action.
The real procession — far-out to close-in, walk-in: being served, leaving happy — this is fundamental, but oftentimes ignored. How does that work — how would you manage the journey of *experientiality?

• 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 strives for multiple turns in the day’s meal cycles.

How might this be analyzed?

Sequentially.
In our expertise, the idea of sorting process and epiphanic moments could be synchronized to a step-by-stride, instant-to-instance, moment-to-momentum:
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?
You stand for something,
there is a badge that says who you are.

• Story is comprehensible —
tell the consumer, fast,
what the story is.
Don’t make them work for it —
find ways to tell it, signing
and graphics, menus and mobile,
websites and print offerings.

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

• 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, the community of your audiences —
knowing your market,
the competition thoroughly,
who’s winning and how they are evolving —
good inquiry to examine.
Asking this question — are you up to speed
with who’s out there?

D E F I N I N G   I N Q U I R Y   |   S E T T I N G
T H E   H I G H E R   I D E A L

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.

EXTENSIBILITY
THE BRAND FOUNDATION:
WORKING SYSTEMS
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 applications, inventory, morale boosting and messaging as well as other applicable forms — upfront one way, same on the back side.
BRINGING A HOLISTIC MESSAGE:
MEDIA KIT*
Brochure, delivery system, designed one-sheets.
The sensation of passion and wholeness are clear, what you stand for, what you’re like, what you mean — these are the resonant element of memorability.

LINKING CONTENT AND TRAINING TOOLS:
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 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 strategy should include 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 person 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 interaction).

Meeting others — a place
(the nexus).

THE RUDIMENTS OF ANALYSES |
HOW TO PLAN
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 development — how you think about it, how you’re telling your story.

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 one client relationship that used this methodology.)

STAGGERING THE EXPERIENCE TOUCHPOINTS |
THE RHYTHM OF SPECTACLE
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 happy sequence of attractive actions. It’s always that challenge, sequencing discovery and attention must be paid to the intention
of the brand and its offering.

Think like a guest.
What happens?

THE EQUATION OF GOODNESS |
AN ENLARGED PHILOSOPHY
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.

How does your guest
own their place —
at your place?

X MARKS THE TOUCHPOINT |
CLUSTERING SENSATE STORYTELLING MOMENTS
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 our thinking, relates to “being present,” awakened and alive — vitally “on.”
In all ways: on.

THE PROCESS OF ENGAGEMENT |
THE PLEDGE OF COMMITMENT
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. And the etymological reference to “engage” is literally to pledge. And to that reference — what is your promise, your pledge?
Each one of these “ripples in the ring” should be considered — point: signing, point: drivethrough, point: standard, point: your front door, entry, point: merchandising, menu and window messaging and offering visualizations. All synchronous — casually observed by the guest in transition, but powerful in its holistic mechanism.

THE ENTRY SEQUENCING |
THE JOURNEY BEGINS
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 |
NAVIGATION
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. Tell your story, show the betterment of what they came for, enticement shall magnetize.

THE COUNTER ENCOUNTER |
LESSONS LEARNED
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 expert 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
are just as vital.
Be social.

INTERNAL CIRCULATION |
WHAT PROOF CAN BE FOUND?
Up and about, guests circulate — what is the expanse of the brand storytelling? The landscape should support a sense of the authenticity of the statement; it’s not a hollow premise. 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-in if you purport dimensionality of brand storytelling and layering of expressions to the truth of your potentiality. It’s not the same old — it’s a song with different melodies — catching the drift of the tune builds expansiveness of experience detailing.

THE SENSE OF THE TABLE |
THE CARTOGRAPHY OF ARRANGEMENT
A sight for hungry eyes — food, packaged, branded messaging, storytelling on the wrap, table amendments — amenities can offer the touch of another point of experience 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 |
THE BALANCE
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 |
THE SEND OFF
What’s the good bye?

THE SOUL OF PLACE |
BRANDS AND EXPERIENCES BUILT BY HUMANS
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 — the people that are inspired to make the offering — 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.

People are people; they make things.

Tim Girvin | Drafted at Harbor, Schaumberg, Illinois
Project Context:
http://goo.gl/0i0Hj8

*Experientiality — design thinking founded on a multi-sensory strategy of experience development: integrated holism.

THE ILLUSTRATION OF THE MIND: FROM THOUGHT TO WORD IN DESIGNED LETTERFORM LINGUISTICS | ALPHABETS AS BRAND VOCABULARIES.

Working on hundreds of logos and corporate identity packages, in decades of design and brand development for clients around the world, over time there are learnings to the hidden code of the alphabet, and how that applies to identity theory.

How do you think about a simple letter,
a piece of type?
What is the impact on design strategy and thinking?
Holism. Integration. Recognizable style. Seamless reflection of a dynamically whole brand presence.

And why not design your own, link identity to a systemic alphabetical formulary?

You think about the alphabet as made up of two key elements: as a vertical stroke and a circular rendering — the interface of the I and the O, or the i and the o which set the pace for the entire alphabet, it’s the detailing of the rhythm of geometry.

For years, in designing identity programs, we’ve thought about how that could play out to a campaign, a font system, print graphics, signing and environmental graphics, packaging systems and product naming; it all flows out from
the inspiration of the idea
and the core littera principia of the alphabet:
the
i
&
o.

In our weekly type design and calligraphy classes at Girvin,
we always start out with —
“what’s the I,
and what’s the O —
what are the details of their structuring
and how does that work
for the alphabet as a
rhythmic system of movements?”

Inside those two letters are the fabric,
the brandcode®,
of an entire design language.

Designing a logo, then speaks the question:
“how ownable is this design, how protectable is it?”

Build a customized rendering, and a font that goes along with it,
and yes —
it’s even more registrable.
You own it because it’s yours.
It’s just for you.

The hand, with mind and meditation, starts that journey.
When you think of a brand, a person, a word — what comes to mind?
Could you just draw it out?

Poster | logotype for Mark Morris

Most of the history of type design at Girvin comes from a legacy of training in biology at NewCollege, working with Lloyd Reynolds at Reed College , working the limits of self-guided education at the Evergreen State College and then what I call Alphabet Odyssey in a adventuresome run to meet with designers in the UK, France, Switzerland, Austria and Germany, finalized in a speech on American Design in Moscow and Tallinn.

That was my beginning,
when I really didn’t know
what I was doing.
Just doing.
It.

So, in rendering typographical concepts, I start with a familiarity in writing by hand — writing with the hand, setting the foundations. That might be on rough, handmade paper with notes.

And that might be penciled, or penned renderings, starting as tracings — as in this foundation for a bejeweled font for Jewelry at Tiffanys, later demoted to a catalog font.
With, then CCO|Tiffanys, Susanne Manheimer.

You start, then restart, then tune, then revise.

Any rendering —
from tracing to formalized ideation,
eventually finds ink in its making.

Part of my earlier history was working
with Bob Ciano at Life Magazine.

That working collaboration was calligraphy, custom type, photographic folios, initials and rubrics —
spread by spread, page by page.

I’d work with him at the HQ of the Time|Life publishing group in NYC and we’d build treatments, design ideas, calligraphy and lettering design for the publications. I worked with him in a string of design developments over many years — and finally, on the design programs for Travel&Leisure.

Again, custom font, font system.

These started as sketches, then typographical kerning studies
and finally converted to film formatting for headline testing.
You can see how it works.

Conceptual sketching and form studies.
g
Kerning breaks.

Larger studies [signing scale]

Film compositing rolls.

That led to a string of studies — building campaigns for Nordstrom —
one of my first retail design relationships —
my pitch to them, working on that brand before designing the Nordstrom logo and font system was about integrative deployment — 360º strategy;
to that, I designed signing and shopping bags.
And fonts.

That led to John Jay and working with him
for nearly a decade on design collaborations in NYC,
the most obstreperous of which would be
the major fortnight campaigns that were
Marvin Traub’s
gift to the city of Manhattan
as gala Bloomingdale’s events.

A GALLERY OF CAMPAIGNS | CUSTOMIZED GIRVIN ALPHABETS
AND IDENTITIES FOR BLOOMINGDALE’S

FRANCE | Bloomingdale’s NYC

JAPAN | Bloomingdale’s NYC

PORTUGAL | Bloomingdale’s NYC

SOUTH CHINA SEAS | Bloomingdale’s NYC

All of these campaigns involved customized fonts,
alphabets for signing, pop-up shops, restaurants, collateral, advertising and video.
A font system for India — another campaign.

The other point to integration can lie in signing and the systems to support building branding — which is, literally, branding buildings: creating custom fonts that align with the brand, the architecture, etc.

Here’s a rendering of a string of fonts designed by GIRVIN.

These are all project related and unavailable as purchasable fonts. They are — the GIRVIN corporate font; a font for FIFA’s posters, a inscriptional font for stone-cutting [a redraw of Eric Gill’s Perpetua], a titling font for CBS | 48 Hours, Nordstrom’s identity font and signing typography for departmental signage, a typeface for a neo classicist skyscraper in Seattle, a font for Michael Bierut and Massimo Vignelli, and finally, lastly, one of several campaign fonts for windows, shopping bags, merchandising and print advertising at Nordstrom.

It’s my belief that the alphabet is a transformational device, rooted in magical and mystical origins and, well-drawn, has unimaginable power.
Read.
Rejoice.
Wonder.
Weep.

Tim
––––
Crowdweaving innovation >
ideation, charrettes + brand events
Girvin BrandQuest® | goo.gl/yAquKQ

THE HYPERREALITY OF SYNAESTHETIC DESIGN THINKING

[images from Clodagh]

It’s been suggested by many that designing holistically is really the tasking of design towards a sextet of responsive and sensational layers for beings and their experiences in wandering places that are designed and made.

That holism
we call
*experientiality.

Well-made place-making, it might be more of a reflective—mirroring back– and reflexive—reactive responsiveness—standard of how beings engage in the spectacle of life—since surely it’s far beyond seeing. And in that sextet of senses, that would come to how people touch and are touched by the holistic layering of sensations—as well as the added sensations of balance and instinct, let’s say—the sixth sensation is the gut reaction of instinctivity.

[Clodagh]

In my design-making history, my journey has been to find resources and relationships that I found the most fascinating. I’d see something that someone designed in a book or magazine, and I’d try to find them.
Talk to them, learn from them.

[Clodagh]

Write.
Call.
Go see.

That started in the 70s — international studies, working out there: UK, France, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, the 70s Russia of Moscow, U.S.S.R, the non-Russia of Estonia, “Estland”—I went to find, to talk, question, learn and
experience from mastery:
first-hand.

And in my line of work, the hand speaks.

Talk to the hand.

[Clodagh]

I went on to rounds of meetings and explorations in the 80s, the 90s, the 2000s. One that I sought out there in Manhattan, in the beginnings of her career, was Clodagh.

I sought her out again, decades later, the 2000s.

What struck me then, was a unwavering commitment to the idea of not merely theorizing, but implementing, to my take, the hyperreality of sensate design solutions – where art, design sorcery and mystical properties, materiality and the breath of dragons are synthesized as a coherent exploration: design strategy and deployment in place-making.

[Clodagh]

That journey lends itself to mystery, to detailing solutions that build an admixture of conceptual foot printing, material sensitivities, magic, sustaining materiality, green wisdom, texturing and sensate density, layering of material rhythms, meaning, coloration and sense-making touch-points.

I asked for a copy of her new book to study just that—where she was, where she had gone, and rather where she has come to, after meeting her years back.

[Clodagh]

The book to study is here.
There are stories on her gifts and outreach,
her humanity,
as well as the broad scope of her design legacy and continued brand-building for projects around the world.

[Clodagh]

I’ve gathered some imagery that relates to my observations from her projects and assignments around the US and internationally.

Below
[Clodagh]

Wander in.
And wonder.
And, to earlier notes on
the synesthetic impression, they are here.

*Experientiality —
design thinking founded on a multi-sensory strategy of experience development: integrated holism.

TIM | GIRVIN OSEAN STUDIOS
….

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 = goo.gl/WCHxLM

CLODAGH BIO:
Since leaving high school at seventeen, dropping her last name and setting up her own company, Irish-born Clodagh has been a constant force in the design world. Her professional trajectory has remained steadfast: to remain true to herself and to produce quality, inspirational and life-enhancing design. She passionately believes that good design can support well-being, and her pioneering use of Feng Shui, Chromotheraphy, Biophilia, and sustainable materials has enriched her projects with an unmistakable look, structure and flow that appeals to all the human senses. Widely recognized as a a leader in the green design movement, she aligns herself with companies and vendors who also embody this ethic, as well as fostering relationships with companies who strive to contribute philanthropically to their communities. In her studio in Manhattan’s Noho neighborhood, Clodagh oversees three distinct divisions: Clodagh Signature, the product design group for her many licensees; Clodagh Collection, an on-line showroom highlighting Clodagh and carefully edited home furnishings and accessories from all over the world; and Clodagh Design, her design services studio. In 2009, Clodagh celebrated her 25th anniversary of design in New York.

SYNAESTHETIC EXPERIENTIALITY AND DESIGN LEADERSHIP

As a journeyer of decades of design, all over the world, and in partnering with many adepts in that journey, it’s interesting to study different models of design leadership.

There are collaborators and team-builders, there are legions of implementors and executioners and there are the leaders and visionaries that drive design as a journey—they step out there first.

Fortunately for me, over time, I’ve had the chance to step-in early and listen-to, work-with, explore and collaborate with some of the most amazing designers in the world: listen to them, watch them, participate in a project or two, walk further out, learn and gain more, get more from this designed life.

That story brings me to Liz Muller.

Several years back, I was studying, for Dannon, an initiative with a couple of client colleagues and friends—years in collaborations, Eric O’Toole and Miguel Leal, the notion of a strategic revenue booster in a string of actions that ranged from innovations in rethinking packaging, product innovations—ingredients, cultures and flavoring—to partnering with a national supplier of frozen yogurt ingredients, to the build-out a Dannon stores, and finally—an alignment with Starbucks in the alliance of in-store Dannon product.

We worked on all of them—even designing powerpoint strategies, presentation icons and merchandising tactics for team sessions.

To the last notion, the Starbucks alliance, we worked in a set of team-round discussions on the proposition of a “farm to table” celebration of yogurt—

Dannon farms to yogurt shops, leading to the buy-in of YoCream.
Those workshops at GIRVIN
led to YCC|NYC.

We named, branded and designed a telling exemplar to the street-wise impression of a new modeling. Park Avenue, south of Grand Central, NYC, thrived and starred for awhile.
YCC | YOGURT CULTURE COMPANY

What could be more necessary than a perpetual collaboration?

We pushed, we wandered, we explored and made the shop of highly customized yogurt makings. A special menu was built, a processional sequence designed, a serving strategy was born and the tactics to make it happen—by the thousands of visitors.
Popular and packed during its spree.

And it was this string of studies, and co-corporate discussions that led me to Liz Muller — working near her; driving, almost by herself, a sequence of retail concepts that were operating, as far as I could tell, outside of any standard for retail design for Starbucks that anyone else was abiding by.

Who is this person?
The not-Howard person?

That’s Liz.

Starbucks executive chair Howard Schultz and SVP Creative, Global Design, and Innovation Liz Muller in the new Starbucks Roastery in Shanghai on Sunday, December 3, 2017. (Joshua Trujillo, Starbucks)

Joshua Trujillo
What started this wild initiative of innovation was our work on Dannon, then seeing her work, being curious—talking to her about what she was doing—just what was her work on creating the concept for Heritage Starbucks?

This is where I first connected with her work [1st & Pike,] then 15th Street Roy Street, then the split-open University Village Store—followed by the Paris Opéra, again orchestrated by the imaginative fires of Muller’s visioning.

What, India? Next: the flagship Mumbai Bank innovation—a Tata alliance with Starbucks.

Image: TataStarbucks

Image: TataStarbucks

Image: TataStarbucks

Dezeen comments on her work in Amsterdam.
The Starbucks Press release?

Starbucks Coffee Experience ‘Laboratory’ to open at New Concept Store in Amsterdam

In a few weeks, Starbucks will open a new concept store in Amsterdam, but with its ‘Slow’Coffee Theatre, hyper local design, floating community gathering spaces and on-site baking, Starbucks – ‘The Bank’ is a glimpse into Starbuck’s vision to the future.

While over the last few years Starbucks has gone to great lengths to reinforce the superlative quality of its coffee and products, under the radar they’ve been re-defining the atmosphere in which we drink it. In Seattle, New York, London, Paris and now Amsterdam, Starbucks has been stealthily unveiling unique and highly individualized concept stores across America and Europe.

Starbucks – The Bank

Situated in a 430 square meter subterranean space in the vault of a historic bank on the popular Rembrandtplein, the new shop is the 9th Starbucks concept store to open in the last three years across the globe, but the first shop they are openly referring to as a ‘laboratory’. A large beautiful store inspired by Dutch culture and tradition, ‘The Bank’ will raise the bar on how Starbucks openly innovates.

The laboratory

Considering its well-earned progressive reputation, Amsterdam might be the perfect spot for trying out new things. Starbucks ‘The Bank’ will function as a testing centre for innovative coffee brewing methods in its ‘Slow’ Coffee Theatre and offer small batch reserve coffees available no where else on the continent. It will also premiere Starbucks first ever Clover® brewing system in Europe. The Clover® is one of the most significant innovations in coffee brewing since the introduction of the espresso machine. Starbucks – The Bank will also feature new food concepts including in-store baking. What works at ‘The Bank’ will make its way to the rest of Europe.

Repurposed hyper-local design

As with all Starbucks concept stores, the Amsterdam shop will be a radical aesthetic departure. Under the direction of Dutch-born Liz Muller, Starbucks Concept Design director, more than 35 artists and craftsmen have kitted the subterranean space with quirky local design touches and sustainable materials. Local design details include antique Delft tiles, walls clad in bicycle inner tubes, wooden gingerbread biscuit moulds and coffee bag burlap, and a ‘tattooed’ ‘Delftware’ mural highlighting the important role 17th century Dutch traders played in exporting coffee around the world.

And while all the design and constructions adheres to strict Leed® sustainable building guidelines to reduce the impact on the environment, the designers have gone out of their way to integrate repurposed design. In addition to reclaiming the vault’s exposed concrete and 1920s marble floor, the entire shop is kitted out in repurposed Dutch oak – the benches, the tables and the undulating ceiling relief made from 1,876 pieces of individually-cut blocks. Also a radical departure from Starbucks house style are the various types of chairs and stools, reclaimed from local schools and spruced up.

Neighbourhood hotspot

With window seat cushions, a centrally-situated oak table and multi-level spaces that cameo as stages for local bands, poetry readings and other cultural activities, ‘The Bank’ is positioning itself as a cultural gathering spot in the middle of Amsterdam. With literally thousands of people living within a minute’s walk, the shop will also playfully use social media to communicate relevant moments. For example, the bakery will send out a tweet announcing ‘warm cookies’ the minute a batch rolls out of the oven.

Then the Roastery in Seattle’s Capitol Hill, which, in a PR move of some unusual character in the Starbucks roster of sharing talent, spotlighting key leadership in brand design, the message was quite specific to Liz Muller’s characteristic holistic and sensationally dense contributions.

As a designer, I tend to look for the lead, the big grab to the brand, and its story— what’s the major reach-out, first up? What am I seeing first? Then, how do I get into, grasp more of the details, the smaller touches?

For as we’ve talked about in the past, is that it is the smaller details that seem to stick in people’s minds. “What I remember is that patterning in the floor, the little pebbles, or that tiny symbol on the door, the creak of the floors…”

And, to Liz Muller’s thinking, the daughter of a culture of highly-crafted design thinking and implementation in a family that, to her Father, was led by architecture and furniture design and cabinet-making, and to her Mother—a seamstress and operator of a sewing / design school. And from a foundational press release on Liz in 2014, precision and detail are top of reference:

“No detail inside the new Starbucks Reserve® Roastery and Tasting Room in Seattle escapes Liz Muller’s attention.
From the stitching on leather handrail covers and hand-stained wood finishes throughout the 15,000 square-foot building to the precise location of two industrial roasting machines capable of handling over a half ton of coffee per hour, every component of the first-of-its-kind retail space has the discerning touch of Muller, Starbucks vice president of Creative and Global Design.

Just as each cup of coffee Starbucks served in its 43-year history has led the company to create an unprecedented coffee theater for its customers, all that Muller has learned since childhood prepared her to lead the team tasked with bringing Howard Schultz’s vision to life.

As a little girl in Amsterdam, Muller discovered the value of precision craftsmanship from her parents. Her father was a fine cabinet maker and architect; her mother ran her own design and sewing school.

‘Perfection,‘ Muller said with a satisfied smile. ‘I understood perfection from an early age and I’m still driven by it.‘

What this journey in conversations and sharing has left for me, in studying the empowered evolution of Liz’s envisioning dreams and team leadership—practicing passion to commit to dreams, regardless of how outrageous they might appear to make them happen: ‘Passion has to overtake common sense, because otherwise people would have said it couldn’t be done,‘ said Muller.
‘Everything is possible; it’s just a matter of figuring out how to do it.‘

Schultz elaborated on how he wanted coffee beans to travel through the café to and from the roasters. The challenge was to seamlessly integrate coffee roasting, coffee education, retail areas, a spacious café and a restaurant all in one location – a building constructed more than 100 years ago. It had never been done before. How much time did Muller have to do complete the project? One year.

A small Starbucks design team traveled through Europe for a week looking at coffee houses with small roasters. But ‘Howard’s vision was much larger’ than anything they saw, Muller said.

In a hotel in Amsterdam, the team started sketching the unrivaled design that would become Starbucks Reserve® Roastery and Tasting Room. The finished immersive coffee experience is almost exactly as Muller imagined it.”

That principle led to a core effort in the challenge of offering a reach-out to the Roastery ideology—as a Reserve bar storytelling at an enlarged scale at the corporate offices. Once again, to my walk-through of the Mullerisms of the space, there is a gravitational radiance to the roaster central, there’s a pivoting outwards from the kitchen, there are vast doorways to transit, that are touched with tiny details. It’s that balance between the gigantic swooping gesture and the micro-details that I find as a constant den röda tråden—the red threading of carefully considered design and place-making experientiality.

There’s a thread, from the large sweep of ideas, to the stitching of the leather details.

As in Milan, only days old, the newest installation:

The roaster was made just a few miles from the center of Milan by Scolari, a family-owned historic coffee manufacturing company that has a decades-long relationship with Starbucks.
Joshua Trujillo/Courtesy of Starbucks

Someone, that would be Liz, is watching.

Explore this journey in detailing— from the front to the back, back out again:

Design is that: making a sign—the mark of a map, the symbol of deeper and mysterious values, the crisp of a letter well-drawn, that makes a word. And that skeletized string of letters, that forms words, meanings, stories and sentences to the now of yes, the wonder of yesterday’s dawn, to the wisdom of tomorrow, reborn yesterday, today—then to:morrow.

As a designer.
Keep on,
the making.

T. Shaw Girvin | OSEANSTUDIOS
…..

GIRVIN | DESIGN MEDITATIONS ON
APPLE INNOVATION: THE LEGACY OF STEVE JOBS
& APPLE BRANDING [+GIRVIN]
DESIGNING IMAGINATION : AND THE TOOLS TO MAKE IT HAPPEN
goo.gl/akGWR2

DESIGNING FURNITURE THAT PROTECTS THE USER.

As a designer, I’m frequently talking about the core power of markings. In fact, at Mark Anderson’s futurist, high tech conference—this year in ParkCity, Utah, I was doing just that—talking about the symbolism of the mark and the patterning of markings as a larger sequence of storytelling symbolisms.

So if there is belief:
practice what you preach.

Working with a set of fallen, street-harvested urban trunk sections, band-saw cut, I drew ancient symbols of protective power. They are about containment, encirclement, flow and the manifestation of energy—a kind of amuletic fluency, brush-drawn with focused force and ch’i.

Imagery by Dawn A. Clark.

So what of a mark, well-laid, as a statement to place?
In the context of branding and place-making strategy, a brand management and processional experience tool would be the patterning of a place, the brand storytelling drawn in, and through, that visitor walk-through.
Some notes on that thinking.

A mark tells a story—as you see into it, wander into it, know it.
In fact, earlier times, the mark was a form of evocative power—one mark can speak volumes, of myths, of journeys and adventures—of personal travail and triumph, of memories and meaning—what could be, rightly disposed, is an open to the leaning-in, the listening, can speak to the opening of eyes, hearts and minds.
A mark opens the nothing.
It splits the dark.
It divides an open space into quarters—as the + is drawn. And the circle stroke contains.
As in, those meditations speak to:
There is nothing: the space of unrecognized void.
Then:
there is a point.
Then there is a line.
There is a +
And there is
the circle.
And there is the whorl-winding, the labyrinthine spiral of
the no-thing to the some-thing.

Most design, including the design of alphabets, comes down to this symbolic language.

The point:
boom,
there is a mark in place.

And it sets a mark in time.
Measured, it is plane-revealing.
What was no-thing now has a perspective,
a seeing-through to the other side.

The mark sets a beat to the articulation of space, into the perspective rendering of place.

The line, the splitting of the void to halves—the equinox,
or the staff of light.

For example, the Arabic alif—
light-splitter, the first stroke of creation.

The cross-stroke—
an exemplar in our work for Tableau.

And finally, the next most powerful symbol—the circle.

All together,
this the core of the symbolic language—the most powerful foundations for all of
the most graphically simple,
designed marks.

Even the most common containment—the square—is but a straightening of the boundlessness of circularity.

I was thinking, what of taking fallen, cleaved and polished timber, drawing marks as a talismanic form? Then furniture?
The talisman is emblematic of protection, and mostly consisted of markings, symbolic scratching, alphabetic spells and sigils.
That is, talismans are mostly graphical. So I thought to manage the notion of a protective procession with the furniture of cleaved street-fell timber, from our partners at MeyerWells.

This maps out as:
—the dot, marking space:

—the rule-demarcation of light and dark,
—the stroke of the transecting planes.

And that table, standing in the office, with a series of alphabet blocks looks like this.

Any drawing requires a meditation, a moment before momentum: a pause in study of the wooden slab:

of the crossroads:

The X,
the +,
the crossing guard,
these are among the most powerful symbols—they are definers of plane, of axial points, of intersections and interplay between realms. And in global cultures, the crossroads are places of magic. One plane meets another, and at that crossing point, the neXus, that is where the portal lies, between planes, between realms, the heart of the doorway.

And the symbolism of the X

has been widely noted and studied in earlier examinations.

O N W A R D S :
—The circle, it is our return, our containing, our protection.

As a draftsman, stroke-maker, calligrapher, I’m curious about the meditation on the power of the stroke, the force of focus and engagement, so when I draw these furnitures, I pull force and explosive energization forwards—the sheer charge of the ink on fields of paper, metal—and, in this instance:
the fallen and sheared slabs of aged timber.

And its place as a talismanic piece of furniture?
A stanchion in the library passage point at GIRVIN | Seattle.

And others?
From the circle, the spiraling form marks the journey of us all: labyrinthos—coming out, onwards, inwards;

The timber is cut with a massive bandsaw, sectioned from large scale, downed timber as I’ve selected from a standing stock:

trees that have died, rotted-out or storm-cast; they are crane-lifted
and hauled to a mill, sectioned and polished.

I size up the timber and look
at the character of the slab,
then draw to it,
into it,
on it.

And the furniture becomes something else, a protective object.

Which then becomes this tableau:

—Another timber: the serpentine: flow.
Life is a meander, like a river, it keeps moving, there is flow unceasing and the force of the river keeps its pace,
ever forward to the Sea.

A bookshelf, wall-mounted, the serpentine pathway:

The X-file, as an entry talisman to the office.
Hung with guy-wires on a three-panel canvas circle stroke—the ensō.
The slab weighs several hundred pounds, and
the canvas enso is 10’ high.
The raven on the spiral table is cut from cold-rolled, then ebonized steel on a toggle, fabricated by John Bandringa, a Girvinist from the 1990s.

It’s a messy business,
but I like it.
These are signs, sigils and signals of messages, from this side, to the other side.

Those who know how to read, shall know—
human or spirit.

TIM | GREENSBORO, NC
….

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 = goo.gl/WCHxLM

Experientiality.

A quick scan of the dictionary shows nothing, just words that are “around” this spelling—experience and experientially. I thought when I first used it that I’d made it up. But there is more to it—from two sides: one]—from the Latin, experiri—which is to “try.” And two, that outreach of expansion—the other outcome of experiri—experiment.

Experiment. Experience.

The smoke of experience design—like fume, sensation is an invasive proposition. Sure, it’s about the gustatory—the taste tier, the olfactory—the scent of things, the auditory—the sound of experience. Tactility—the touching sensation. Visual—the visualization of contact.

But there is, as well, three other tiers of spatiality—
how we sense space and our contact with it, wholly.

Vestibular—our sense of balance in place in space, our head, in relationship to the earth—gravity—movement: acceleration, deceleration. “Where are we?”

And “where is my hand, my leg, my body—what’s happening with it?”
Proprioceptive.

And the perception of condition, which is interrelating these sensitive attributes—
“I’m hungry. I’m hot. I’m tired.”
Interoceptive.

When you examine the circumstances of where you are, what you’re sensing—all of these elements come into play. Touch, orientation, sensation of place in space, what you see, hear, smell and taste—and what, how are you “feeling about it?”

Photography above: @dacarc

Could you design for them? In a momentary startling of a bird, what I mostly noticed was its disorientation—slowly, how to get back to it—making that bird’s spherical world rightfully disposed and balanced?

As we work through a brandquest® study—a team workshopping of brand-making in place, we’re exploring the holism of sensationalism: it comes down to that long-running examination of “what’s the story, who’s telling it, what’s it sound like—feel like, what’s its touch,scent, sound, taste—how does it balance?”

We’ve been contemplating place. And what happens in the making of place. And what happens to humans, in experience—it comes in everywhere, comes out, everywhere. When you contemplate place, how do you think about it?

A place of memory—what’s first to mind?

What reMinds you?

To epitomize that exploration, that meditation, what would be the best modeling? Scent, perhaps? Light? Coloration? Shadow? Touch? Materiality—what’s most memorable?

Point is, how does what describe and organize those sensations, go back, come forward.

One might think—the most memorable place: where to eat?

There are few experiential design projects that are more sensately complex than restaurants. Holistically, restaurant experiences reach to every facet of human sensation. And they are about telling stories in a sequence of layers — a sphere of connections to experience. Sight, scent, taste, touch, sound — and finally balance—gravity, the instinctual intuition of self impression, vibe and reactivity—“I see this place, and now I’m hungry!” If you will: memory—could that be a sensation? All of the collective sensations then summarize as a messaged gateway to the past, well-recalled.

We believe that experience design reaches to all of these places—the first five, the initiating connection; these are the obvious, the first elements of sensation. Then it comes to how sensation is organized as a orientated expression—it feels like this: with gravity.

Follow: deeper.

I walk back to other brand development encounters and relationships—to experience strategy, that comes to the people component of experientiality. People to people.

There’s more, to the context of human connection—and that’s the people that run a place to eat in, celebrating savoring. I was reading about some other friends, other restauranteurs — and one that I’d worked with, connected with earlier. Sirio Maccioni.

Sirio Maccioni
Photograph by: John Lei/The New York Times/Redux

And there’s a greater and more expansive story there: about humanity, sensation in the warmth of connection: experience design management. To my link with him—and to restaurant leadership, is about these sensibilities—all of them; the focused outreach and alignment, as well, in the human touch. All of the senses are there—and in the leadership; it’s about the guidance of the brand and the expression of that brand, that story in the relatedness of personal reach. It’s that touch, that celebrates hospitality. This, in a way, concretes all of the eight experiences — the interweaving. Human to human. Now, there’s an added dimensionality. More of a reach.

There are complex levels of layering—deeper, more emotional levels of contact; these might be sensed as psychic interplay, where the five senses support an enveloping depth—a greater sensitivity—in the sphere of balance, the context of intuition and instinctual, reactive vibration; and finally, the capturing vessel of memory.

What I personally believe—what we hold to, is that if a person comes in contact with a place that we’ve been involved in creating, then I need to be, the design team needs to be, contemplating the design elements first in obvious play—and comprehending that there will be more to consider in deeper levels of experiential meditation. Deep stating.

What is the reflective sense of containing memory; what is the vibrational response; and finally, how is the person balanced in the experience of place?

It’s not about the obvious things—it’s more about what lies deeper in the play of how place is made. And in a manner of speaking, creating design is always about the opening, and more obvious, grouping of solutions—and then there is what lies beneath that veneer, to more integral framing of human connection. I’ve been writing about—we’ve been exploring—that idea of the human brand for years now, and as I get further into the work, I realize that I understand more—but that there is far more, as well, to learn. And it’s never about objective qualification—it’s more so about subjective experiment, experience and result.

Dawn Clark at a GIRVIN brand charrette

Brand design, experience design, we walk back to a string of explorations. One example?

Working on PearlBellevue, with architect Dawn Clark and interior designer Robert Norwood, as well as the owners Bradley Dickinson, Mikel Rogers as well as operational strategist Arnold Shain—our visioning was to find the heart of the story and then team-telling that comprehensively in the detailing of experience development—in mere months from the opening planning strategic initiation.

It opened; it’s rocked; it evolves.

But this is about the journey that got us from the dream to the realization—actualizing opening the doors, workshopping soul, sensuality and an overarching conceptualization that went from a name, to an entire interior design and branding proposition.

Transforming ideas to action.

There is poetry in Pearl

Pearl is the quintessence of the mother ocean, who is, in primordial spirit, the matrix of us all.

Finding a sense of story, brand, strategy in making place—the process is always about finding the heart, the heat of instinct, in the center of sensate interconnection—they are always woven, interlaced, in creative action. Balance, instinct, memory.

So in working out the detailing of the place, beyond the mere expression of hollow space….

Transforming old: Trader Vic’s left;
new: pearlescent custom paint, right.

It was a matter of gathering that sense of the polished, concreted refinement of the deep sea, the cooly warm—the lustrous—the layered, the transparent, the veiled— and thinking about how to capture that spirit in the eight dimensions of sensation in the human context. But in the coolness of that pearlessence, it’s further about the person in play—that is holistically reflective; it is the one, the leading ownership of the brand—Bradley and Mikel’s dream state, it is the other — the guest. How do they reflect each other, how do they connect with each other — what warmth in hospitality is renewed? The guest: “You link with me, as my host, I’ll recall that connection, share it with others, the legacy of warming interconnectivity is extended. Of course, in many ways, this is entirely the proposition of Danny Meyers’s “guest first and reach-out and touch everyone proposition.”

Creating luminous paints, to pearlize Pearl.

So we look for textural connections that are—and are not; they are there, and they are not; there’s something to touch; and there’s something there that—like a veil—is a filter to other levels of conscious experience.

Play out the metaphor.

In our thinking about art, we float ideas and sensibilities that are smoke, vapor, veil, layering—it’s about what you see, what you sense, and what you do not. And therein lies the story—we draw you in, draw you out. But it’s the drawing itself that counts—there has to be that opening gesture to the made. Well.

And tease the instinctual in memory and the palace of intuition.

We reach beneath the surface. And it’s there that the 3 other senses come into play. Balance is your sense of place in the context of a sphere—it’s your balance in the world—it’s the gyroscope of your psychic / physic place. Balance is your vessel in perception.

Savor flavor.

And then, to the centering of memory—WHERE ARE YOU IN THAT BALANCE—AND WHAT DO YOU FEEL LIKE?

WHERE DOES IT GO, WHAT BECOMES OF IT?

The recollection: the sense of instinct and intuition. What you sense is based on the final gathering of millions of points of input; it’s your moment, it’s your memory—and in sensing anything, your reaction will be about instinct—your intuitive sense of your place in the moment. We design there; we build on our instinct, to speak to your intuition—and the whole sensuality of the moment, in momentum.

Bar place, brand space.

The layering of touch, and sight, mixed with scent and sound, tinged with taste, imagines the other senses in play — balance, your place in space; instinct intuited, vibration tingling and memory recalled. The voice of experience is whole.

Exploring a steely reflectivity – silvered luster.

So in a way, Pearl is an experiment in experience — it’s about reaching to the levels of Pearl, symbolically — herself — layering, veiling, enveloping, concealing beauty in beauty. And, finding the heart of the brand — that story — in the center of place. Drawn in, your memory in experience transcribes the encounter. And hopefully, you’ll not forget it. All of the eight senses are interwoven in a tapestry of connection. The guest is the nexus of the brand experience. At the center…

Seat. Eat, Treat.

More, experimented and explored, here:
Actualizing dreams of place-making—the quintessence : I
Pearlessence: II [brand poetics]
Working in Parma & NYC — brand storytelling a place dreamed: III
Really, what’s cool: IV
Story V | The dream of patterning story, as a place, made, well.
Story VI The making of place: dream of healing—the future patterning.

The Human touch, contacting…
Pearl team, launch day.

*Experientiality — design thinking founded on a multi-sensory strategy of experience development: integrated holism.

Tim | Seattle Waterfront
–––

BUILDING HOLISTIC DINING BRANDS
STRATEGY + ENTERTAINMENT =
SENSATIONALIST: EXPERIENCE
E N C H A N T M E N T + B R A N D STORYTELLING
https://www.girvin.com/subsites/dining/

BRANDCODING® EXPERIENCE DESIGN

Designing environments with brand language and patterning built into the experience design strategy.

What if there was an intention to create a pattern language that could guide consumers, renovate places and simplify guest movement and sales engagement? Such was the case in our build-out of a patterning language in a succession of Nordstrom stores, starting with a study in brass screed patterning and metaphorical design thinking in a newly invented “woven warp and weft” screed array in the newly renovated floors of store one, Seattle flagship, downtown Nordstrom. That line of thinking was taken to Chicago and implemented in a dynamic renovation strategy for Nordstrom Irvine.

In that application, the carpeting and tiles were removed to the concrete substructure and the design played towards a pathway metaphor that was applied in a manner to accentuate guest journey. While this was an inexpensive renovation, its goal was to create a route-making expression that created pathways without creating guest blockades or guest / salespeople impediments. It was widely defined as strikingly successful. Customers were enchanted and store managers were delighted with the store still being operational during much of the renovation process.

The sequencing of this experiential design patterning maps into this cartography of approach:

NORDSTROM BRAND PATTERNING | IRVINE

Referential allegory—the tailor’s chalkline

Possible pattern linguistics

Trial floor arrays and conceptual sketches

The floor plan

Pencilled sketches

The precise digital redrafting

Explorations of texture and trial painting applications

Concrete trials

Masking of final array pathways

Final floor treatments

WHAT WE KNOW | EXPERIENCE DESIGN DETAILING: SENSATIONALISM AND MINUTIAE

Guests experience details. They notice the large sweeping gestures—but, in our experience in interviewing visitors—they recall the delicately displayed treatments. From our Disney interviews: “I remember how the carpets matched the journal’s icons, and how the signs explained how to get to the right place—it all fit together.”

Here, Irvine?

“This was like a guidance system that wasn’t—it showed a way. But it was playful and fun. It created a graphical energy that was uplifting. While we knew there was a renovation that happened, it kind of created a crisp vibration that broke down conventional barriers. It was freeing, since there was energy and rhythm in the lines—and they were like chalk-lines, which called to mind the spirit of bespoke tailoring. Which is a Nordstrom thing—perfect for me, perfect for you—well-made and just right.”

PATTERNING LANGUAGE AND INSPIRATION

I was walking the forest around my studio, looking at its pattern language — the light, the array of the trees, the patterning of light-lines on the forest floor, the tread of footprints in the shadowed light of sand dunes, grass patterning and the waved rippling of grained crystals.

It’s all a pattern, isn’t it?

And, as designers—and those shown and explored below—there are ways to look into
the heart of brand, soul-searching,
studying design vocabularies, messages and
deep metaphors to build out a patterning language.

Nature has her own story, which can be a founding guide to direction for thinking about brand patterning, allegory and deep brand space. Her patterns fill space, they flow out, occupy lightbound areas. She seeks the light and responds to it. In a manner, the examinations below do the same thing—they refract and pinhole the shadowing of light as a perforation or reflection of luminous movement.

Would it be possible to consider the framing of patterns as
a layering to storytelling brand and experience design?

Surely.

There are patterns in storytelling—the rise and fall of characterizations, the landscape of narrative—the where, the how, the what—the riffing of the storyline—the plot journey, the character of suspense, emotionality, relevance and impact. And there are patterning expressions that can be found in the placement of stories in the context of actual environments—symbolic legacies, iconic references, myth and legendary implications, persona and attributes of the heart, soulfulness and magic, mystery and wonder.

It’s been an obsession with GIRVIN to explore the concepts of brand development and patterning in place-making. And it’s something, as well, that GIRVIN has been involved with for years. Ranging from simple shopfronts and graphic programs to design systems of substantially larger detail and scale. From quick restaurant skin/exterior design programs to Asian department stores of a significantly enlarged order.

But the key challenge in this exploration is the concept of how a brand manifests itself in meaningful place creation. Any brand, in the acknowledgment of an interior design scheme needs to consider how, and why, a participant in the place will recognize that sense of presence. Presence is the balance between intentional experience and experiencer attention — if the intention is fully realized, then a participant will fully recognize “where they are.”

In walking the streets of San Francisco, working there recently, I was studying some examples of place-making and thematic brand implications in retail design. In the past, in two instances, in working with the team at Gucci | YSL, I’d linked to the design team that was promulgating the current design intentions of the evolution of the Gucci brand.

The overarching strategy was created by the design and creative director, Frida Gianni. and noted in a blog from 2008 at the launch of the new concept on 5th Avenue, NYC. The new store is just blocks south of another powerful retail presence, the opening strategy of Apple, also studied in an earlier photographic walk through. Interestingly enough, given the spectacularly powerful use of transparency in the design strategy of Apple’s first store in NYC, so too does Gucci consider the concept of transparency as part of their brand messaging. These components find themselves empowered in the vision of James Carpenter and his team — a group of architects, designers and engineers exploring glass, metal, fenestration and the visual story of light and refraction. Notes on his work here. It was Carpenter’s involvement, in particular, that lent, to Gucci, the concept of a uniquely formed glass cladding that evinced the character and rich lustre of the brand messaging and retail strategy. And Carpenter’s genius is in light. There’s a current story of course in the context of NordstromNYC.

And that story is about light.

Back to Gucci—and Tokyo, you can see, in these photographs below by Dawn Clark, AIA LEED AP, some of the imagery of the system, as well as in the James Carpenter, specially-created glass that finds itself in an exterior expression.

While it’s not perfectly evident in these images, the rainbowed luminosity of the treatment, the idea of the concept of light refractivity and reflective effects are part of the vocabulary of the brand—and even in alternate arrangements, other shop exteriors and interiors, this strategy is carried through.

In examining the idea of brand in relationship to comprehension, it might be said that the key principle is looking into the heart of the brand to the components that are actually meaningful. That is: with an experiencer, what’s the relation emotionally to the brand in terms of recognizable visual language?

The G monogram is an iconic dispositoning element. A gesture to this would be the use of gold, the patterning of some of the product offerings—like woven fabric that is rhythmically expressing the brand—as well as signing and other details that might mimetically reference the brand conditions and attitude.

During a San Francisco client meeting, I wandered the neighborhood, these treatments evince Gucci’s branded essence—the conjoined G’s and the use of warm metals: gold being a more relevant materiality than, for example, silver or steel.

The brand patterning strategy—in the link to the opening flagship Tokyo retail launch of Gucci — and the explication of the work of James Carpenter’s team could be found in the use of ribbed glass-work cladding for the skin of the structure and the role this gesture to the interiors, as well. The rippled glass, the sense of layered transparency, the patterning of the brand—whether signed, incised or sheathed in the opacity of frosted skins—it’s all saying something.

Gucci brand: That sense of recallable distinction isn’t easily had. Walking to other stores in the neighborhood and exploring their sense of brand experience management lends lessened attention to the idea that every detail counts — especially in the presumptions of luxury experience design.

Another lesson in brand management of patterning and visible language might be found in the spirit of DeBeers new installation. Yet, while the character of the brand is widely known, it’s not clear what the mnemonic character of the patterning and how that might be recollected by a guest.

It’s one thing to be decorative, it’s another to be memorable in the particular indices of how consumers will relate to the brand. What’s the story and how is it visualized? Finding a code that will resonate is essential — and it’s never about the stylish graphics alone, but of the symbolism of the effort and how that would be perceived psychically in the meandering mind of the customer. It’s not that people aren’t looking, it’s that they might not know what they’re looking at. That doesn’t presuppose that people won’t get it — but for the embrace of a brand, the idea is there are familiarities that are subtly implicated to expand and deepen the richness of the experience.

What symbolism, then, might be suggested in these treatments?

Sandblasting cross-layered rules as a gesture to diamond cutting?

MERCHANDISING BRANDCODE®

I believe, as well, that coding the brand — in retail presence — can take components from merchandising and bring them back to brand. The implications of the legacy of Hermés as a saddlery and equestrian outfitter lend themselves to the notion of taking the “tack” of merchandising framing — in this instance, literally: framing.

Framing that comes from the styling of equine equipage, as well as their stylistic expressions. I shot these in San Francisco, just down the block from Gucci and DeBeers.

The horse legacy:

Framing signage:

PATTERN OR DECORATION:

There’s another conceptual string, to the notion of this exploration — the use of patterning as a detail that supports the creation of place, but the adaptive character of that expression as a link to the larger conceptual thread of experience design. Architects are not wont to call their work — experience design — but in the layering of this review — we’ll call it that. Personally, working less in the corporate marketplace and more in the realm of retail, entertainment and restaurants, I’ll link the concept of brand to story, and most of the buildings noted below have a sense of story attached to them. Narrative in architecture might relate to the idea of procession — the movement into the place, and the experience therein. That sense of spatial exploration and movement in place can be light, openness, compression, channeling, scent, vista, touch — both intimately scaled and dynamically expansive. The containment of architecture can be delicate or gigantic — and each has its own sense of power. What I find compelling is the bridge between these worlds — the entertainment of light, space and place — in how a human can experience a built world.

Louis Vuitton Brand Patterning:

Luggage patterning becomes merchandising substrates.

This double image references wall glass checkerboard with a collage wall paper—a code from the luggage.

Merchandising of product and patterning — one language becomes another.

The geometry of wall treatments becomes a diffusion of the brand language—the code of the square, the checkerboard, the luggage treatments.

Merchandising design rhythms—brandcode becomes patterning visual display.

Shinkenchiku.net is the entity behind A+U | Architecture + Urbanism, one of the best periodicals on the planet for exploring trends in the best of the best of architectural strategy and exposition. Amazing—and sometimes unseen—structures abound in this collection, that dates back in a series to the coverage of the late 80s to the present time.

There are some renderings of relevance exploring the use of materials and patterning in treatments, for architecture, and below I’ve gathered some of these. Really, to deeply understand the work, I’ve tried to offer site links—a comprehensive online version for A+U doesn’t seem to exist..

The PET wall | Blaine Brownell

An issue features a story and an image of a project by Seattle architect Blaine Brownell. Brownell has focused on what he calls disruptive materials. A+U describes his efforts in the magazine in the following way, his blog notes, “Ceramic, glass, concrete and metals are ordinary materials architects are familiar with. Through new treatments and interpretation, these ordinary materials can be transformed by technology resulting in new architectural effects. When glass is printed, sight lines are altered, creating various degrees of transparency. In the form of a fabric, metal acquires malleability instead of rigidity. By engraving patterns onto concrete, the smooth surface takes on a new texture. The projects in this issue are marked by this characteristic that could lead us into new expectations for the future of building and construction. In his essay, Blaine Brownell introduces a host of new materials that are developed due to environmental concerns, a surge in technological advancements and the rise of developing cities. As we enter a new decade, inevitable change to architecture, construction and resources await us. As Brownell advocates, ‘it is precisely the intersection of environmental, technological, and design innovation that holds the most promising future for architecture.“

His opening essay, which accompanies the foreword is an articulate expansion on his thinking — from one view, a technological overview of remarkable new materials, and on the other, the ideas that these materials might create better environments, more interesting places for humans to live and be in. There are a series of publications that add to the mix, Brownell’s Transmaterial series—great books to explore what’s new in the applications of materials to architectural and interior space. On the site, as well, you can link to an ongoing email that outlines Brownell’s explorations. Amazing are the submissions he receives, researches and offers to his readership.

Explore as you will.

Blaine offers a representative treatment of this thinking in the use of new materials, an installation of PET bottles, transilluminated from the inside, creating a luminescent, even organic space. That, to speak to the character of this review, relates to that idea of patterning—unique materials, arrayed—in presenting place in a new way.

Design and Photography by Blaine Brownell

M A T E R I A L I T Y:
BRAND LANGUAGE AND CODING AS PATTERNING METAPHORS

Some other references, to materials and patterning:

Sauerbruch Hutton | Museum Brandhorst
Munich, Germany | Ceramic Cladding

The intriguing component of this work is reflecting the vitality of a museum “brand,” in the context of vital color applications, complexity belying the beauty and clean clarity of the spaces within.

Notes from Brandhorst: The Multi-Coloured Façade
The façade looks like an abstract painting and draws attention to the building’s function as an art museum. It comprises various layers with different functions. On top of the building’s substructure and insulation there is a layer of horizontally folded sheet metal with fine perforations. In front of this, 36,000 ceramic rods have been fixed vertically. These are finished in 23 different coloured glazes and fall into three groups of shades and tonality, accentuating the impression optically that the building is made up of three separate, interlocked volumes. Walking past the building, the surface of the façade seems to alter. There are countless variations in the appearance of the materials and the structure: seen from an angle the vertical ceramic rods form one smooth surface; seen face on, the horizontally emphasized background is visible and becomes the dominant feature. From a distance, the groups of different colours blend into neutral shades, each with a different brilliance and tonal impact. From close to, each of these fields becomes broken down into its component colours.

Foreign Office Architects | John Lewis Department Store and Cineplex | Leicester, UK

AECWORLDXP: “The most outstanding feature of the store design is the façade, which is designed as a net curtain ensuring a light, transparent touch to the bulk of the building volume. The concept is born out of two factors: the desire to provide privacy to the interior while still allowing it to receive natural light, and to devise the pattern for the net curtain in a way that appropriately reflects the cultural and historical traditions of Leicester as a city. A steel and glass bridge connects the Department Store to the multi-storey parking block across Vaughan Way, while another bridge at the rear connects it to the existing Shires Mall. The building occupies a whole block with a main street frontage at one end and an existing shopping centre at the other. The net curtain pattern was applied over the entire street-facing façade, which makes it appear less opaque from the outside, and at the same time renders the store layout flexible enough to be rearranged as and when required.

The store cladding was designed as a double-glazed façade, creating a controlled level of transparency between the store interiors and the city. The pattern of the net curtain drew inspiration from Leicester’s 200 years history of textiles and weaving, the translucent saris worn by the a sizable Indian population that lives there and John Lewis’s tradition of producing quality fabrics. The pattern, chosen from John Lewis’ archive of textile patterns, was developed to produce a number of templates that allowed for a variable degree of transparency across the department store perimeter and produced a seamless textile-like cladding. To further integrate the context in the design, the pattern was applied in mirror ceramic frit on the external layer, which reflected the context onto itself. For the design of the cinema frontage, there was an attempt to continue with the notion of the ‘curtain’, but one that is opaque, similar to traditional curtains used in cinema interiors.“

3DELUXE | Leonardo Glass Cube | Bad Driburg, Germany

Creating a “brand world” for the company Leonardo, the transdisciplinary firm 3Deluxe defines their design strategy for this German glass technology group. Here, the patterning language is truly brand-linked, forming the basis for a much larger integrated expression of the Glaskoch premise.

Blog imagery from le deluxe and www.glass-cube.de.

Glass Cube inspirations from Leonardo: “With the opening of the LEONARDO glass cube in Bad Driburg in May 2007 the vision of developing the glass brand into a Lifestyle Company received an architectural face. In a unique and innovative architecture the multifunctional building unites a Brandworld, an Academy Area as well as a Design Lab. The liaison of soft, organic structures and a clear, linear glass cover convey ingeniously the three core brand values – Inspiration, Emotion and Quality.“

Stefano Boeri Architetti | Ex Arsenal at La Maddalena | Sardinia, Italy

From Stefano Boeri’s site: “THE CONFERENCE HALL: a glass cube suspended over the water The Conference Hall, plausibly the most representative of the interventions, is a glass and basalt prism that cantilevers over the water. Almost 2000m2, it is a new construction that hosts – aside from flexible spaces for nautical events – a large conference hall suspended 6 meters above water that looks out towards the extraordinary panorama of the Gallura. A new landmark for the Maddalena Archipelago that reinterprets in visionary key the relation between the power of the surrounding natural elements and the rigorous forms of traditional Italian military architecture.“

The concepts of patterning, to the designer’s interpretation, come from the discipline of Italian martial architecture, so in a manner, this idea of brand and patterning in place making relates to the spirit of this premise.

Asymptote | The Yas Hotel | Abu Dhabi, UAE

All imagery © Asymptote: Hani Rashi + Lise Anne Couture, Courtesy of Bjorn Moerman

Arup, the engineering group defines the patterning in the following manner:

“Façade design | The skin of the grid-shell comprises approximately 5,000 diamond-shaped glass panels, varying in size. These panels enable the complex geometry of the façade to be a medium for sequenced lighting or moving imagery. In this way the building adds both to the racetrack atmosphere and the hotel’s brand image.

The glass panels have a carefully-selected coating and frit pattern that balances visual transparency with light-responsive properties according to different local conditions. They are each individually lit with a bespoke RGBW LED luminaire designed to give asymmetrical light distribution.

For the bridges Arup utilised high-efficiency fluorescent and LED technology integrated into the structure and architectural components, along with adjustable ceramic metal halide sources, with glare protection for drivers and spectators alike.“

Again, the link to patterning in brand presence and place making context forms a holistic impression — in this instance — of enormous scale and challenge.

Caruso St John Architects | Nottingham Contemporary | Nottinghamshire, UK

According to the site, “Nottingham Contemporary was designed by the award winning architects Caruso St John. They were inspired by the surrounding Lace Market, specifically the bold, elegant design of the warehouses that serviced the city’s world famous trade in the 19th century. Former warehouses in other cities have proved flexible and creative spaces for artists’ activities, as in 60s New York or 90s Berlin. Its unusual form is the outcome of building right to the edge of the irregular site (as a consequence, there is just one perfectly rectangular room in the building). Our building has been constructed from scratch on what is said to be the oldest site in the city, home to a Saxon fort, a medieval Town Hall, and finally a late Victorian railway cutting. The steps at the side of the building have recreated a historic right of way.

At 3,000 square metres, Nottingham Contemporary is one of the largest contemporary art centres in the UK. It has four galleries – lit by 132 skylights – a performance and film Space, a Learning room, The Study, The Shop and Café.Bar.Contemporary.“

The notion of the patterning — laid into sequences of rollers for casting and impression, created lace treatments for casted applications in concrete, as shown, in detail, below.

Eduardo Souto de Moura | Museu Paula Rêgo | Casais, Portugal

To the notion of examining the concept of patterning, capturing the storytelling of the human, living brand of Paula Rêgo — applied here — the character of the plank lain on concrete, that forms the rhythm.

Treusch Architecture | Extension of the Ars Electronica Center | Linz, Austria

To the notes of the site on the commentary, translated from the German, the architects offer: “The main thought behind the design has been to create a sculptured building with a structure totally accessible by foot, and therefore an exciting experience within itself. The existing Ars Electronica Center and the new extension are connected to form one unit to be perceived as an ensemble. The crystal-like appearance generates a homogeneous interaction with its surroundings, at the same time becoming a distinctive landmark.“

“Facade Design
The existing Ars Electronica Center is connected to the new main and supply building by a steel & glass construction. The double glass facade, partly transparent and partly translucent, can be illuminated by LED (liquid emitting diode) technology installed in the space between the two layers of the facade. Each facade element with its own LED panel can be individually controlled, with colour and brightness/intensity (RGBW) infinitely variable. This innovative lighting system – unique in Europe – presents artists with a whole new range of imaginative creativity. The Ars Electronica Center also presents another speciality as standard illumination, the facility to display pure white light. The AEC building turns into a glowing white crystal at the touch of a button.“

To the conceptions of patterning, light moves as a lightning path of array of ideas and creativity — the glass façade shows the nature of the illuminated paneling as a builder of the language of electronic magic.

Heatherwick Studio | Aberystwyth Business Units | Aberystwyth, UK

From the site: “The studio developed a special cladding system for the buildings. As stainless steel is everlasting but expensive, the studio sourced steel the thickness of cooking foil. This makes it affordable, but it crinkles easily, providing neither structural rigidity nor insulation. These problems are overcome by crinkling it in a controlled manner before spraying a CFC-free insulation foam on the back of the crinkled surface. The paneling is affordable, rigid and well insulated; it accommodates details like eaves and windowsills and has a non- uniformity, reflecting the forest’s leaves and pieces of sky in its facets.“

The patterning to this system, an amazing expansion on the innovations of Heatherwick’s inventive mind — in this instance, a crumpled yet highly durable solution, cost conscious, but offering a distinctive link to the character of a start up colony of “business pods” at Aberystwyth. I might offer, as well, that Heatherwick’s newest solution for the UK pavilion in Shanghai is worthy of exploration — to the rhythmic creation of a pattern language of fascinating conceptual power. More here — and two images to entice:

Patterning is a code—from the large to the impossibly small—it is about seeking rhythm—from one idea to another, from the story of a brand, a person, an inspiration—and how this ideation might be implemented in a manner that moves through the conceptions of place, in building on memory and extraordinary experience design—for the maker, the builder, and the experiencer.

WE are wanderers looking for beauty.
The quest to sharing it.
The commitment to spreading it.

GIRVIN references on patterning:
Brandcoding®
Brand development and cumularity
40 Bond | Schrager | Herzog+DeMeuron
Modernism and decoration | placemaking
Rethinking | brand placemaking and story
Light patterning
Energy patterning | Herzog + DeMeuron
Bird’s Nest | Herzog + DeMeuron
Patterned brand
Resort patterning
Seibu | Sogo: Osaka and Jakarta
I gave a “patterning” talk at FiRe [Future in Review]—Mark Anderson’s global tech conference on technology.

What does pattern mean, to the history of the word?
That’s compelling, actually:

pattern (n.)

1324, “the original proposed to imitation; the archetype; that which is to be copied; an exemplar” [Johnson], from O.Fr. patron, from M.L. patronus (see patron).

Extended sense of “decorative design” first recorded 1582, from earlier sense of a “patron” as a model to be imitated. The difference in form and sense between patron and pattern wasn’t firm till 1700s.

Meaning “model or design in dressmaking” (especially one of paper) is first recorded 1792, in Jane Austen. Verb phrase pattern after “take as a model” is from 1878.

Tim Girvin | NYCGIRVIN

THE LAYERING OF STORIES

In decades of work in the market space of fragrance, there are stories in the construction of perfumes—the tiering of memories; there are stories in the layering of ingredients and there are stories in the marketing of how scents are delivered, packaged and presented. Designing a perfume—there is invariably a story about what the legacy of one’s personal experience with a scent.

Just imagine it: going back in your own life—
what scent comes to mind?

Memory is meaning is mind is memory is mind and meaning.
Of course, in this scent-building—what do you mean?
The journey of perfume design development
is a labyrinthine journey of memory and meaning.
What for, are you?

In my travels around the country—and the world, I have distinct memories of fragrances that impact the meaning of my journey-making.

Farms—many farms—inform my sensation of fragrance,
in different parts of the US. That would be memories of the tiered layering of fragrances of hay, weathered woods, corn, hops, cattle, leathers and hides, engine greases, oils and fuel and manure—perhaps, depending on the farm, the chemical sensation of pesticides and fertilizer.

There’s something about farms and fragrances.
And farmers.

When you smell, gradations of perfume permeate the consciousness of the moment—and that momentum spills memories—which hold to the past, concrete the present.

This legacy of speaks to the notion of place—a place is something that we make, it’s a design challenge to craft a place—which is inherently discrete from “space.”

In earlier meditations, space is nothingness.

But does nothingness have a scent? According to astronauts it does, which, in the straits of imagination, would suggest a hard, metallic and burnt smell—which, as former astronaut Chris Hadfield puts it, is like a post-devil presence, a witchery of fire and brimstone—to his thinking, space doesn’t scent more than the vacuum of space as it siphons trace chemicals out of the walls of a spacecraft.

You can buy the scent in support of NASA’s strategic contribution to STEM, a learning association based on its acronym for science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Considering the visualization of the sheer emptiness of space, that clanged metal scent of a hot forge seems just about right, given the legacy of how space was formed in the first place.

Bang.

TIM | SEATTLE WATERFRONT | QUEEN ANNE STUDIOS
––––
PERFUME & FRAGRANCE BRANDING | BRAND, STORY & SCENT
EXPERIENCE DESIGN + PACKAGING
STRATEGIES | goo.gl/kTh4AP

STRATEGIES OF CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE,
JOURNEY AND RETAIL PLACEMAKING.

Everything’s boarded up, downtown Seattle and Capitol Hill. As Seattleites, we protest. We don’t like something, we will let it be known. Things do get out of hand—by some, not the others. There are, of course, tiers of statements. Some hold banners, march and cry out. Others loot as their statement. And others shoot.

I protest.

It’s in Seattle’s nature to be revolutionary at our core—as an early outpost, far from the maddening shores of, for example, San Francisco in the 1800s—we rebel to make things different, to make new things. I’m sure there are many earthlings that hold this sense of historical principle in their own cities—
each, to their own rebelliousness.

I was out for a drive, Sunday morning, studying what’s up,
Seattle shopfronts, retail and restaurants.

Of course, you can tell a lot about a city by the health of its streets—
what are these characteristics?
Clean? Bustling? Active?
Lit? Lots of feet? Trafficked?
Nope.

That’s a broader statement of the condition of things, around the world.
Step by step, people repopulate, get-out.

It’s in our nature: move.
And.
You.
Go.

In our experience, in my own history as a designer and brand person, I’ve worked around a lot of retail propositions for store and story design—and plenty of grocery stores. I’ve worked on tiny programs for small delicatessens, grocers and simple stores, as combinant sites. Like our insertions for USFoods—MetroDeli. I worked on Haggen, Top Food & Drug, Safeway, Costco and other brands, even retail groups and convenience stores in Korea.

I also studied shelf merchandising arrays—how customers shop, move through, for example, Nabisco [Mondelez]—is there a packaging and shelf presentation? Is there an arranging of visual priorities that customers see—the red bullseye of magnetic draws towards key product arrangements? Let alone eye-tracking, hot-spotting, aligned offer groupings and maximized facings?

But that’s what it’s all about—journey design, the *experientiality of sequence the movements from one place to another.

What about Amazon’s Grocery Go?

App in.

Pass the sensors
and enter the space to get what you need—

going one way—you go this way:

While you circulate, of course,

the ceiling is observing you.

There is a cartography of journey—a channeling.

In earlier modeling of the grocery store, or any retail strategy, there is a postulation of pathway that is the most desirable, the reach to goods in a psychic processing of best purchases and sensate exposures in sequential tactics of revelation. In Go, that processing is clearly demarcated.

In my own journeys of retail design—and the exposures of place-making—I tend to disobey most expected retail mapped movements. In some, for example, I enter through the exit, which is a telling reversed journey-making; you come-in at the end.

I walk most stores going against the current to watch how people are shopping, by walking backwards—going against the current allows the observer to see how shopping works better than walking in the flow of commonality.

I even walked Go backwards—but of course,
in this instance, the entry is controlled.

Fresh is front.

Rather than other Amazon retail holdings, like WholeFoods—this is a more broadly accessible product set—there’s Frito-Lay+Pepsi, CocaCola, more mass consumer goods—and less to rarefied organic, gluten-free and genetically unmodified food sources.

Graphical systems are minimal, restrained and mostly clinical in their impressions—there’s not much hand-work here—font systems are off the shelf, nothing special here; it’s all linked to the brand disciplines of Amazon graphical codes—which are less to personality and humanized touch, and more to fast communications and a highway-signage-type of environmental graphics.

See them from afar.

The walkout is where the concluding takeaways are—prepped food, for one, and alcohol, for another—and there’s a sentinel station, as it would appear. The employee count per store is minimal—stock layers and guidance counselors.

It’s an efficient blend.

Fast, silent, emotionless and technical.

Clinical efficiency comes to mind—and it’s worthwhile to posit the preliminary study of this brand-start-up is resilient and agile—it’s set up for quick change and lightning evolution.

I’d look for a more humanized character in the detailing of the environment: while the componentry is slick: it’s texture-less, touch-resistant and there could be more to retail allegory and storytelling, metaphorical design thinking.

Like, more fun? Happier, more artful—emotionally memorable and less transactionally focused?

There has been an earlier string of examinations of that front—
symbolic place-making.

And that lies in the idea of of holistic sensationalism, which speaks to our invented postulate from earlier in this overview: a retail brand could say—“however you approach me—you can touch me, feel me, believe in me.”

And you
want to
be
here.

*Experientiality — design thinking founded on a multi-sensory strategy of experience development: integrated holism.

TIM | OseanStudios
…..

G I R V I N | N E W  FAST WOWNESS
INNOVATION WORKSHOPS
CREATING STRATEGIES, PRODUCTS,
IDEAS FOR CHANGE.
http://goo.gl/4fXQyE

RAPID INNOVATION: https://bit.ly/3dd1q3P

When you make a place,
what gives it soul?
Authenticity, material utility, legacy of use.
Humanity in play, ingenuity of unexpected applications.

Soulfulness wouldn’t support a clinical cleanliness or synthetic manufacture, soul—
by its very etymology—refers to sea, which is about journey.
Then, to our thinking,
designing soulful places would be about a materiality
that suggests journey, implies use and even a rustic utility—
which, in Japanese aesthetic would be wabi-sabi, a string of characteristics that align
with simplicity and impermanence, hand-worn economy—
and the appreciation of naturality, the state of naturally-made expressions and materials—
could be the way paint and wall coverings
are applied on materials that show continuing use.

That’s a street, of course, but the textures are compelling.
What then of a made patterning of floors, tailored chalk lines at Nordstrom, Orange County?
We designed these floor treatments, like a street metaphorically expressed as a journey,
adding rough-texturing to a highly technical space.

Referencing, here are the concrete trials—
testing texturing and patterning for making a place
with a new conception of journeying for customers.

We developed that rough scumbled texture—
which was templated in the masking of final array of taped pathways:

Which came to this, as laid in variations at Store One,
the flagship Chicago, and here—Orange County,
the final floor treatments

As a designer, I find that the work on converting spaces to more meaningful places, more often than not has to do with the very journey of what soul—the guest, the visitor, the customer journeyer–is supposed to be. What’s in that place—where does it carry the journeyer?

Soul is, as I’ve noted, a ancient seed sound—a voicing—for sea,
and the point that would be lies in
the human journey — from life to death, the sea is the journey, and it is—while crossing—leading to a finishing point.
You get somew[here.]

For many, watching the Sea
is an endlessly cycling and quieting meditation.
Lots to think about,
watching waves—about patterning, cyclicality, rhythm—and the impermanence of all things.

Scholarly etymologist Doug Harper suggests that, “A substantial entity believed to be that in each person which lives, feels, thinks and wills” [Century Dictionary], Old English sawol “spiritual and emotional part of a person, animate existence; life, living being,” from Proto-Germanic *saiwalo (cognates: Old Saxon seola, Old Norse sala, Old Frisian sele, Middle Dutch siele, Dutch ziel, Old High German seula, German Seele, Gothic saiwala), of uncertain origin.

Sometimes said to mean originally “coming from or belonging to the sea,” because that was supposed to be the stopping place of the soul before birth or after death [Barnhart]; if so, it would be from Proto-Germanic *saiwaz (see sea). Klein explains this as “from the lake,” as a dwelling-place of souls in ancient northern Europe.

Invariably, what I’ve seen
is that a place that is made with,
or has soul, is one that is touched by human hands. There’s some sensation of craft and care in it, there is human attention.

A house, a studio, a store or a garage
that has the marks of a collected
and perhaps curated human character is more soulful —
there is the detritus of humanity —
content that implies depth and meaning-fulness.

Therein lies thinking that builds out
the layering of storytelling, memory, magic and meaning.

Which comes to the open absence of something called space
to the creation of something fulfilling in the nature of place.

Still, the meaning of one’s life journey and gathering could be the stuff of other’s examinations of interests and discovering. Beauty sings different songs in the eye of the beheld — those that hold, gather and collect add their own patterning of being and feelingness.

Meaning is, literally, what you “mean.”
In the stretch of intention, the reach becomes the tenet, the tendency towards principle—as the words are aligned, etymologically linked together.

They stretch out.

What I think about meaning is
touch, holding, contact and the larger layerings of
sensationalism —
the exhilaration of the sensate.

Make a mark on a space and it becomes a story that you hold as a place.

A soulful palace has
love—love is belief, literally “being love.”
And in this manner, something that is loved
adds a layering of soulfulness.
There is the implication of care
and
the certainty of commitment in placemaking
that defines a place that is aligned with
the soul of the participant and
the context of the experiencer.

And a powerful place—a soulful place—will be touch-worthy.
You walk in—there is a feel to the footfall.
There is a lean-in to
the wall that has a rhythmic clip—a touch.
Touch plays moments of contact in journey, yet is whole-feeling.

Your
wholeness
touches.

When I think of soul-full places, I can go from the
upper Galleries and reading rooms
of The New York Public Library.
It might be a legacy environment — perhaps
Alexander Carelton’s rendering of the legacy brand Filson.
Or it could be the Lodge.
Or it could be The Museum.

The big store.
Or
Curtis Steiner’s small one.

It is rare, and
it can’t be “invented,”
it has to be tuned
[and loved]
by hand.

When you
get into a
place with soul,
it says something,
it
calls out:

You’re looking for a place like this.
Soulful places.

Me too.

I like to make places like this.

One
of a group
of
libraries.

Places that feel deeper—and they ask you to come on, touch, and feel me.

Tim | SeattleWaterfront GIRVIN
…..
G I R V I N | EXPERIENTIALITY
HOLISTIC SENSUALITY IN BRANDED ENVIRONMENTS

PURPOSEFUL EXPERIENCE DESIGN STRATEGIES, COUPLED WITH INTENTIONALITY. WHEN THERE’S NO PLACE TO GO, WHAT IS THE EXPERIENCE?

AMBITIONS IN DESTINATION | RESTAURANT DESIGN STRATEGIES

Now’s the time for many that experiences are home bound and under locked-down scenarios, places are barred from action; still there are presences—moments of experience. To that end, this could be a passer-by impression—the epidermis of place-making—the storied signage, the tattooing of the building, the sigils of entry, brand patterning and codes—and then, too—the digital alignment of places well made and their expressions in online experiences. And how these two synchronize: thus, the holism.

Surely, the core of any brand is the legacy of the story—and most crucially, the real key is honesty — being simple, authentic, straight forward. That story speaks not only to the interiors, and what could be told in the skin of storytelling a place in the exterior of how people sense the content of its packaging. People know that, either directly in the physical presence, but so, too, their emotional gatherings. People seem to grasp these things in two constructs—one being the emotionality of how a place tells its story, and the brand that beats within—and, to the instinctual side, how that feels.

Over time, working on theories of experientiality and built environments, merged with digital renderings, I’ve journeyed to know people first hand. Meeting Danny Meyer, the legendary human brand (hospitality strategies,) I was struck by his demeanor. Humble, careful, thoughtful — and gracious. Like a host exemplar. Background on the man. But there’s something in the depth of his background that reaches back to his family. I’m reminded of Howard Schultz, in a way — they both have similar vibrations. They get to the point.

Danny spent part of his childhood traveling in Europe with his father’s tour company — then studying the nature of the hospitable in food and wine in France and Italy. That sojourn, like others we’ve written about, and worked for (Paul Bertolli) suggests a deepening of comprehension that builds character, perception and insights in how to connect with people. And at the very heart of experience in restaurant strategy, that’s where it lies. Expertise in being with people.
Working with other restauranteurs, my big question is always: “Are you going to be working here — will people see you?” That’s crucial. And it’s not infrequently, if the answers to the contrary, I’ll pass. Because the real link to the connection to guest relationships comes down to that simple proposition. Be there. Working earlier, with the Reichard brothers on The Habit, Anthony von Mandl and Mark Anthony Brands, or the Schwartz family on their grouping of restaurants—and in this link, one distinctive experiential design layering, Brad Dickinson and Mikel Rogers on the Pearl, in every instance, the success of the presence of the brand relates to the link to the people.

Those who project, are present, are lively in their participation.

As often intoned in the past, it’s the people that make the brand,
to both sides of the equation—
the people who build, and the people who experience.

Then there’s the code — the veritable brandcode — of the restaurant experience.

I just ate at two—both burger-related, and I’m mostly vegan, those two also offer “vegetarian offerings” from two points of view. One, Shake Shack, offers a mushroom “burger,” which is literally a Portebello. And the other is Burger King, which has—as many know—just rethought its branding, messaging and digitization of access.

Intriguingly, in referencing this two-set solution case study one is a recent provisioning at Danny Meyer’s Shake Shack; this is a closely-held restaurant group, and there’s a person at the center. Here is a fundamental alignment between the spirit of the human brand initiative and the nature of that experience:—people: manifesting their visioning, it’s that personality which makes the difference. We all talk about the personality of the brand—and, like any enterprise, there are layers to experience—there are the tiers of people that have committed to that enterprise and the embedment of their principled DNA into the emerging visioning of brand experience; and there are those, on the outside coming in—who could be
enchanted, engaged and embracing of that proposition—
what we call the E’s.

And yes, it is the entrance.

Which is the entrancement.

Which is trance.

Shake Shack, for one, comes from one person’s envisioning: and in examining the code of Danny Meyer’s physical expression—who he is as a human, you find honesty, humbleness, moderate details—yet the imbued characteristics of his psychic presence find themselves made evident in utility.

Simple, get it? Which shows as—brand | building tattooing:

Guest journey > Merchandising Signing—
fast at “what’s for sale?

There is order, here—
bulletproof [artfully tough]
materiality:

Strong, simple—honest and straightforward—
with a stretch towards crowd control, needfully so:

Simple, storytelling:

Simple comfort (but not too—stay but no slouching).

Lights, simple—utilitarian down-beamed—
focus on the food in front of you.

Simple: it works—hello, Midtown Manhattan.

(Imagery by Dawn Clark)

Danny Meyer’s principles—speaking the truth—are entirely human focused: “good hospitality starts with a restaurant’s staff. In hiring employees, Meyer said (at a talk at Yale University,) his restaurants look for people with high ‘hospitality quotients,’ which are defined by what he referred to as six core emotional skills — kindness, curiosity, work ethic, empathy, self-awareness and integrity.”

To the Meyer strategy, employees are the highest priority—even valuing them over his customers. That reminds me of another brand we worked on.

“We were actually putting our staff in front of our customers,” he said. “We learned that if we really wanted to have great customer satisfaction, you would never put them first. You want to make sure that the people who are coming to work love their jobs and love working with each other so much that they are naturally going to do a better job of taking care of our guests.”

That means a lot. People, caring for people.

After his presentation, Meyer answered questions from the audience — and when asked to name some of his culinary heroes, Meyer did not answer with celebrity named chefs.

To his thinking, the real power of success is focus — “his heroes are people who dedicate their lives to perfecting a single type of food.”

“I just have so much respect for someone who goes deeply into one topic and is the best in the world at that one topic,” Meyer referenced during the audience question and answer discussion.

That bridging of intention reaches between the employee—and the power of that relationship to enchant the guest, but as well, the knowledge of the community (and its individuals) profiles.

Seeking more—to aligning the spirit of brand intentionality isn’t a fadish trend, but more potent — following insights and relationships, “John Battallewrites in Search, the database of intentions will soon be upon us,” according to blogger and design thinker, Chris Bernard. “But you don’t need to wait for this to start employing the principles Danny details in your own business.” Bernard notes that “Danny gathers every piece of data about his customers that he can and he then uses it to enhance and personalize and experience of a customer. The more data that Danny has, the more likelihood that he can create memorable and meaningful interactions…”

Top notes from Danny Meyer—while historically documentary, they’re still inherently relevant in a time of perpetual pivoting:

The hospitality economy: “We are in a very new business era. I’m convinced that this is now a hospitality economy, no longer the service era. If you simply have a superior product or deliver on your promises, that’s not enough to distinguish your business. There will always be someone else who can do it or make it as well as you. It’s how you make your customers feel while using your products that distinguishes you.”

The power of experience: “It’s the experience. Service is a monologue: we decide on standards for service. Hospitality is a dialogue: to listen to a customer’s needs and meet them. It takes both great service and hospitality to be at the top.”

The center of the brand — employees: “If you are devoted to your staff and can promise them much more than a paycheck, something to believe in, you will then get the best service for customers, which will in the long run provide the best return to your investors.”
The link to knowledge: “The more dots you collect, the more chances you have to make meaningful connections that make people feel good and give you a business edge.”

Brand and emotional intelligence: “You can teach technical skills, but you can’t train employees emotionally. But you can teach managers how to hire for a specific emotional skill set.” Building his team, Meyer searches for candidates whose strengths are divided 51%-49% between emotional hospitality and technical excellence. “I like to call them hospitalitarians. People who are naturally kind, empathetic and curious, along with having a strong work ethic. They get fed through the process of providing hospitality.”

Locations for ShakeShack—global.

The overview on Danny Meyer’s H|Q—leadership, upfront.

See Danny then.

And Danny now?

Simple. Service—the heart=fullness, that drives the brand. Attention and intention. And singularity of intent in play—what’s important to you, what’s important to those you serve.

Know what you love to do, to offer, and stay focused on that intention
[L. tenure, “to stretch.”] Brand experiences continue to manifest, it’s merely a matter of rethinking the layering, and character, of how they show up.

t i m / at the ShakeShack, Store Seattle,
Amazonia, Downtown Seattle, WA
–––
Love More often—

spherical brand placemaking:
P A S S I O N

Working in Asia, as well as other parts of the planet, particularly in emerging economies, the notion of tinier living environments is well implemented—needfully so. Big living environments are—everywhere—far more costly and mostly less efficient than smaller lifespaces.

During a cultural, economic summit in the UAE, I had an opportunity to become acquainted with Jim Potter, a quiet revolutionary in the front of rethinking development, as well as housing for newly emergent citizens of the Pacific Northwest—a place where you could have your [not too much] stuff, well organized and thoughtfully stowed and a tight efficiency in the arrangement of your living place.

We worked with Jim and his team on a new name and branding for this program, which was variously implemented, including onsite signage. I was reminded of this responsibility in a recent Seattle Times article—on precisely this presumption: Small. Life. Footprint. In this manner, for rehousing homeless people, in a record-breaking presumption of solution-making for those looking to find a more stable way, and place, to live.

Tiny.

This string of articles, in this color, is a cull from two publications
of content that offers insights on the Seattle Microhousing,
Tiny apartments, and co-housing villages. Referential links
are provided for each, with authors credit.

With 2 new villages and an expansion,
the effort to double tiny house
villages in Seattle begins
June 5, 2021

Barb Oliver, director of operations and volunteer coordinator of Sound Foundations NW, visits one of the company’s tiny homes… (Erika Schultz / The Seattle Times)

By Scott Greenstone
Seattle Times staff reporter

It’s going to be a busy summer at “The Hope Factory,” a 8,000-square-foot warehouse in Sodo, where around a dozen volunteers will come in six days a week to build at least 10 shed-sized homes a month for homeless people.

“All of our weekends are booked, except two Saturdays, through Labor Day,” said Barb Oliver, director of operations and volunteer coordinator at Sound Foundations NW.

Sound Foundations and other builders are producing 100 tiny houses, expected to hold up to 130 people, this summer. The houses will sit on two sites in North Seattle and potentially double the size of a village in Interbay. The Port of Seattle owns the Interbay property and has to approve the expansion.

Seattle included these villages as part of its record $167 million 2021 homelessness budget. The materials for each house normally cost around $2,500, although they’re $4,500 right now because of a national lumber shortage.

While homeless rehousing is one solution—smaller places, village-like arrangements, there are others coming along—as a notation towards place-making—here, a reference from SeattleMagazine.

Image Credit: Mariana Kajlich

Brent Gunning has something in common with Henry David Thoreau:
Both have lived in dwellings so small they could open their front doors while sitting at their desks. Thoreau built his own 150-square-foot cabin, while Gunning, a 24-year-old Microsoft software engineer with close-cropped hair and a chill demeanor, has been living for several months in a Redmond micro-apartment, a 140-square-foot space the size of some walk-in closets.

He pays $807 a month (by bank transfer—no checks accepted) for the furnished room at the LEED Platinum–certified Tudor Manor development. That includes all utilities, a free laundry room, Wi-Fi and parking, an option Gunning chose that raised his rent by $60 monthly. His space is as tidily packed as a lunchbox, with the desk and chair, one window, one bed, wall-hung shelves holding clothing and books, and a “convenience center” with mini-refrigerator and microwave. There’s a bathroom with shower, but no closet or kitchen. (Gunning uses a small, shared kitchen, with a stove, down the hall, which he says is rarely in use.) Gunning’s Fender guitar fits in an upright stand beside the door, and so far, no one has complained about his evening strumming.

“I’m saving up to buy my own place,” he says, and this was the lowest-priced decent month-to-month rental Gunning found near his work. Nearby are transit, a gym, parks, restaurants, hair salons and city hall. “Hands down, this was the best deal by a lot,” says Josh Born, another young tenant in one of Tudor Manor’s 61 units (his is a comparatively luxurious 220 square feet for $875 a month). Born moved here from Washington, D.C., after getting a temporary contract at Microsoft. The first month he was here, he paid $1,650 to rent a Bellevue studio.

Small spaces—with matching rents—are the big appeal of micro-apartments such as this one at Emerald 10 on Seattle’s First Hill.

Gunning and Born are early adopters of a new housing trend: extra-small apartments with a shared kitchen down the hall—modern versions of the rooming houses of the past, which best suit one busy, budget-minded person who doesn’t have much stuff. Bellevue-based developer Jim Potter was part of a group that built the first modern micro-apartments in the Seattle area under the name “aPodments” on Capitol Hill in 2008.

In our experience, thinking campaign strategy, it’s good to have a great name, as well as a visualization that is transportable, across media—as in built environments and signage, digital and social promotions. Studying the tiny housing phenomenon, there are new scenarios of small shared, earth conscious greener ways of being. Traveling the country, I’d observed some new references to this shared living experience strategy in, for example, Spokane’s Haystack. Everett, there’s Sunnyside Village Cohousing.
And there’s South Dakota, a state that we branded—
and their Spearfish.

Ready for permanent placement on a foundation. Photo credit: Corey Aldrich.

What about you—could you do it, go small, live in a village—attract other people to live in community of tiny tracts, shared utilities and amenities, all with small houses?
More here, to think about. Like, for example, zoning and construction—
“are tiny houses allowed?”
For us, there’s a potential to aid in the branding and marketing of the entire ethos of the community-based, co-housing and distinctly unique development and home-making consciousness.
Sound intriguing?

Seek out,
go local,
go farther.

And books, like
this one.

Branding is about finding the soul of an enterprise proposition—which is, as we note, telling a story so compellingly—that people are drawn into a sequence of
enchantment, engagement and embracement.

Truth first: authenticity is a requisite foundation.

There’s truth, there is realness—it’s solid, defensible, future-worthy.

There is an attraction—“it feels really right,” there is an engagement—“I’ll reach in, to learn more;” and finally: commitment, the entire narrative is attractive enough to draw people in embracement—“I’m in.”

I’ve defined this, as well, as in an alliterative R-string which is: relevance, resonance, and relationships. The sequence is the same: the allegory of usefulness [it’s relevant,] the song is attractive [it’s resounding, emotionally reverberant,] there is a relationship [it was theirs, now it’s mine:] in the storytelling as we—as users—carry that story forward, what was the brand story is our story as in the “relate” of relationships.

See
the Latin relatus.

Tim Girvin | Old Queen Anne Hill | GIRVIN Strategic Magic
The Design of Experientiality

TOUCH ME MORE OFTEN.
When you circulate, out exploring things—places, brands, natural experiences in the outdoors—what do you do?

How
do you explore?

Me? I’m a touchy-feely kind of a person—I like to touch things, which is inherent in the character of my work, since I do a lot of drawing—by hand—pencil, pen, brush on paper or tablet.

That applies to the sojourning wander, which—when I’m walking the old cities, the old pathways, the old forests—I’m touching everything as I walk. A colleague in NYC once said “walking behind you is like walking behind an octopus, you keep touching everything, your arms and hands flailing around.”

People said, as I recall childhood—
“would you keep your hands of that, please?”

“Alright, now—pay attention: while
we’re in here, don’t touch anything!”
Who’s heard that?

But aside from the allegory of the octopus,
what I’m really interested in is the holism, the touching-points of how people sense places.
And it’s how I feel things.

You walk into something: a place, and you could do the following:
that would be “scent,” [what’s the smell in here?] and then the power of the “sight,” and its question: what’s the sight drawing through to you?

Every drawing is a drawing to—drawn to, there’s a thread between the idea, that point of inspiration and how that draws you in—someplace different from where you are.

You hear, what? There could be a lot of clues to a place for a sense-deprived person on two out of three of the senses so far. As well, there is the touch, the balanced nuance, as some say, to intuition—the sensing instinct.

There is a drawing discipline to the procession into this distinguished shop in Milan.

And it has to do with a design language
that lives in the very beginning of one’s exposure.

The circle. That has a circle in a circle.

So I look for things. Patterns.
And you can see what I look for.

Like procession—what’s the process as to how I got in here?

Journey design.

As designers, we stand to create ideas, impressions, messages and visualizations. And they are patterns—patterning of recognition, patterning pathways, patterning constructions.
We create code, don’t we?

You might ask, just what is a pattern?
It’s an ancient phrasing to the notion of a modeling —something right, as a portrayal, an outline, a plan, a modeling — to that of principle, and yes, a principal. Could be true as a patron, as in the Latin “patronus” — that would be a 14th century appropriation, “the one to follow, as in a model.”

What if you could design a single mark, that then would be
the centering point of a strategy to design, literally, everything?

Logo first, designed — outwardly?

Start close-in, then move out to everything.
Interiors, signing, packaging, lighting, products.
Just do it all, applicably.
Kris Ruhs did.

Everyone knows about 10 Corso Como.
You too, right?
As a reminding, that
would be this visioning.

I was there, looking at environments, walking them, studying them, shooting them.
My own history lies in that selfsame exploration—how could you design a mark that becomes the center of an experiential universe?

You could, like this, start with the walk-in
and see how it works.

Get out there.
Look for a patterning.
Make a patterning.
Find BrandCode®.

Perhaps I’ve over-illustrated the construct, but for a quick scan, you get the point—design a metaphor, that could have a multiplicity of variations and applications, break-aways and sub patterning, and seek out the cartography of the experiential journey—how does one come into it, learn more, explore more—find an unforgettable sensation that draws that experiencer into wanting to have a memorable relationship with the brand and its story.

10 Corso Como is quite the exemplar of that systemic line of thinking.

Worth sharing.

Think about it:
design a symbolic or metaphorical expression—then [p]lay it out as a journey.

Tim Girvin | Upper Queen Anne Studios | GIRVIN Strategic Magic
The Quest for the design of Place.Seattle & Elsewhere www.girvin.com

HERITAGE BRAND DESIGN AND SYSTEMIC PATTERNING

More than four and a half decades ago, 1976, I pitched the idea of integrative branding to the Creative Director at Nordstrom, Dan Holland, and I presented again—this same thematic strategy, later to Claudia Milne, then again to Bruce Nordstrom, then Cheryl Fujii—a lineage of Nordstrom creative and familial leadership.

And the principle of my offering, in the beginning, was the idea that one could build a memorable advertising campaign—a promotional program—that could be unforgettable, imaginatively transporting for a customer. Core to this manifesto was building a holistic naming and identity solution—with nodal componentry [banners and street presence, signage and interior store amendments, specialized packaging design, handtags, windows and interiorly disposed merchandise and display] that could be specially named, branded and wholly packaged, storewide, as an integrative entity—a logo which could reach to everything manifested in the store, street, outside and in-store
—an everywhere event.

I think about it in the context of weaving—obviously, I’ve written about this with some frequency. There are the threads—the narrative itself: the core principles of visual characteristics; there are the lines of warp and weft, the chromosomal qualities of the detailing of the visualization—how they intertwine and commingle—which, in the metaphor of the loom of seeing, are detailed in the shuttle, which transits the warp and weft and lays-in another layering of contrastive detailing—hence: tapestry.

That journey began with a simple contextually buildable name, campaign logotype, usually a customized and thematically-aligned hand-built bespoke font, as evidenced in the sample imagery gather at the header of this blog.

The notion of the evolution of the Nordstrom brand was first evidenced at a stockholders function in the 80s—a investor decried the inconsistency of Nordstrom’s branding, back then—which was one sign on one building, another mark on another, and downtown San Francisco, still another.

GIRVIN was called in to listen to the Nordstrom family—which was ensconced in two camps—one, as above, a commonly available font—classically motivated: the drawing of Palatino, named and drawn after a Italian Renaissance calligrapher, Giambattista Palatino by Hermann Zapf in 1949. The other, something more elegant, restrained and luxurious, yet characterized by a san serif motivation. We designed two pathways, two complete systems for presentation to the family, in an ensuite portfolio of two systems of stationery, signage, all gift packaging, shopping bags, cards and customer amenities. As an alternative, GIRVIN built a custom font, founded on ancient Greek Stoicheidon epigraphy—a 5th century BC rendering of a font concept that—as scholar Stanley Morison [the Milos stone] described it, was the quintessential leap from ancient Greece letter design to Imperial Rome’s stonecutting evidences.

It was what I was looking at, as a contrastive solution. As defined, an ancient discipline of open framing, as in: “the shapes of its letters are those upon which all others depend. It will be seen that they are ‘square’. That is not to say that the letters are all perfectly square, but they may be said to be generally ‘square’ in comparison with handwriting. This is the only sense in which it can be said that Greek, and for that matter Latin, letters are ‘quadrate’. It must be noted that, although in the still earlier inscriptions this could not be said, from the sixth century and throughout the classical period it became the rule.

“There are four primary characteristics of early Greek letter design in the classical period. First, the apparent squareness of the shapes; secondly, the unformity of the stroke; thirdly, the consistence of the complete structure; lastly, the rationality of the shapes in having no unnecessary parts and nothing supurfluous. Thus the script is square, uniform, rational, and perfectly functional. . .”

This key stone represented the best-of, contrary, classical clarity of lettering design—and while it was roughly 2200 years old, it worked.

That became, with a thicker stroke rendering, a core typeface that we built for signage, print, packaging and everything Nordstrom—including the business communication materials and credit cards.

That signing rendering found applications throughout all interior signing and shop-in-shop signing for shopfront brands inside Nordstrom.

It’s profoundly simple, yet entirely bespoke—and while there are changes now in the print and internal online renderings—still, for signage, we integrated it horizontally, just like our foundational strategy in our beginnings at Nordstrom—decades ago. To the first international store, Calgary, Alberta

to the present, below—NYC.
And being built-in, and built-on,
it lasts far longer than digital impressions.

A mark and architectural brand recognition system holds on, given the scale of the signage throughout the exterior emplacements and interior locations in dozens of stores throughout the US and Canada;
there is staying power.

And happily, to the notion of legacy of creative collaborations, and the inventive imaginations of design leadership in store thinking, the wave metaphor with James Carpenter [notes here from Girvin at the launch event] this shows in a string of signing applications, to our original signage systems master documents, at the greatest Nordstrom store in the US, the 2019-launched NYC Nordstrom now awarded the stature of the best of the best, worldwide. the number one department store in the world, by ICSC.

Our logo and signage design package is part of the number-one-ranked department store in the world, Gold Award, Best of the Best, 2021—as awarded and acknowledged
by the ICSC global design committee.

And what is ICSC, exactly?

Shooter Michael Young, a NYC photographer, essayist and design documentarian of all things wonderful and beautiful, being designed and built in Manhattan—his shopfront imagery below. See his site—Yimby.
Learn about his work,
check out Michael’s IG.

These were passed to me by another, from another share, yet another —and it took me a while to find the source.

And even now, there’s take out.

As in the original strategy—store “field” marketing—it’s not just a “shopping thing, it’s more to a complete string of destination touchpoints” 101 UX, sense-based marketing experientiality* designing integrated event promotional events, that tidal movement forward, outreaching to community, like a wave on a wave, coming forward, drawing in the experiencers like swimmers at the beach, journeyers at the crossroads.

The work that I did at Nordstrom led along to other encounters, like my first meet up with John Jay and Marvin Traub at Bloomingdale’s, Target [Dayton] Minneapolis; which, at the same time, went on to Neiman Marcus in Dallas; Target [Dayton] Minneapolis; Wanamaker, Philadelphia; JordanMarsh, Boston; Breuner’s, BullocksWilshire, LA; even Rich’s of Atlanta.

As everyone well knows, the only permanence is change—nothing lasts, ever.

Keep
moving.
Wander to the wishing well | make one | 2022
Tim GIRVIN | Strategic magic | www.girvin.com
S I T V I S V O B I S C U M
MCMLXXVI
IBI FUNDATA

Designing for perfume—the detailing of scent-related *experientiality: D I P T Y P Q U E.

When I see things, invariably I smell them. When I touch things, I hear them. It’s a trait of curiosity—it’s one thing to see things, it’s another to touch them, still another to taste them, or hear them. And smell them. But then again—they, while disparate, could be one to each, altogether to another. Separate, or connected.

The obvious jump is anatomical sensory bridge between scent and taste—since the scent of flavor is intrinsically tied to the holism of inhaled flavor experience, they’re intertwined. But imagining the color of scent is another journey, and linking sound to fragrance, still another. And yet, perhaps most relevantly, as designers and brand thought participants, we need to be thinking aoub the intermingling of multiple sensations in a kind of synaesthetic interlayering. Any brand is about a place and a story, and any brand—in the fire of its making, and all of the outreaches to community and human interconnectivity, it’s a sphere of holistic expression—every threading leads back to the heart.

Girvin @ Bend, OR | Tech Conference: WEBcam

The heated steam of insights: the voice of fragrance, the touch of sound, the scent of sight..
MIngled, they are mighty—and in the deep brain of brand experience, they play to potent memories.

And in our quest as brand workers, we’re looking for
the creation of memorable work—brands that are unforgettable,

Sure, like a kid, I pick things up to see what they smell like. But, too—perhaps like you—I think of a color, a texture, perhaps a combination of imagery and color, its textural character and and it vibrates with the imagination of fragrance. The smell of color, and the sight of perfume. Or the sound of it—
“that perfume sounds like…”

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 an 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 sophisticated and salon-like environments—each of these can frame that quality. Story comes out—as an experiential threading; it’s a brand patterning. 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.

We think of these perfumed premises as brand principles.

• 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?

Perfume designer Pierre Dinand | Tim Girvin, TokyoBeauty.

• 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 should be a link between the brand, the story, and how that place could be envisioned.

Here’s a reference: 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 labeling styling—
a kind of vertically rectangular elliptical rendering.

Radiused rectangles

And the patterning at the shopfront.

Interestingly, the design of an environment for the sale of scents

LELABO | NYC

is often better suited to the layering of story—
an expression that will be richly sensate—
not unlike the packaging that contains the perfume.

ÆDES DE VENUSTAS | NYC

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

TIM | QUEEN ANNE STUDIOS | GIRVIN
––––
*Experientiality: “The Strategy of Holism | Emotionality
and Design Engineering.” World of Work
EXPERIENCE DESIGN STRATEGIES | BRAND, STORY & SCENT

IN THE HISTORY OF A PRACTICE THAT HAS OPERATED CONTINUOUSLY FOR NEARLY 50 YEARS—SINCE OUR FOUNDING IN 1976—THERE MUST HAVE BEEN A LOT OF DIFFERENT STUDIOS, RIGHT?

YES, MANY.
AND MANY MOVES.

That comes out to the following sequence, setting workplaces @ The Evergreen State College, on-campus office during my post-graduate summer associate professor ship and a Eld Inlet studio and library, then Bainbridge Island—then, off the Ferry Terminals, progressively 4 offices [enlarging and reducing—and a jump with Robin & Heidi Rickabaugh] in The Maritime Building—a sidebar creative collab—
ELEMENTS, a Guild-modeled venture with Steve Darland,
Gerald Kumata, & Anne Fisher in the Northwest Industrial Buildings—at Denny Way and Western.

This building-grouping was, back then, the 70s & 80s, a kind of celebrity Northwest Artists haven including, over time—NW art legends such as Alden Mason, William Cummings, Michael Spafford, and Kenneth Callahan.

We kept moving.

I pushed for bigger, and designing and owning the look of the entire space—or better, still, the entire floor, which was the strategy at 2nd & Pine—at 11Ksq’, the Decatur Island Studios—the beginnings of 30 years of remote work in the San Juans, two offices in NYC—two in a building at 26th & Broadway, one shared office in Paris—on the Seine off Jardin des Trocadéro; and then 2nd & Stewart, then back, decades later to 3131 Western Avenue, along with built-out home studios and libraries at 12th Avenue West & Ruffner, 4th Avenue North & Hayes and Fifth West & Galer, the West Queen Anne Middle School studios and library—
and, our newest, suite 501, from 510.

Literally, down the hall.

In a manner, contemplating all of the moves, they were always about scale to activity—whether working in the beginning, by myself or with teams. I never learned how to “be a designer,” I never took any classes in “Graphic Design,” but I had a theory about how things should look, which is ultimately my legacy of work—mostly built on a hand-crafted bespoke rendering in all things.

Make.
By.
Hand.
And the most impactful skill—I could draw. I could render a broad vocabulary of letters in particular.

Since mostly what I wanted to see—precisely—wasn’t necessarily something I could do—precisely, I looked for people who worked in—and were trained—that space of making things in the manner that I was looking for.

That solitary journey—or being the guy that does everything himself has never been part of my life—ever. I always believed, find someone that can do it better than you, stick with them. So it comes to being out front, as a leader, driving direction. But there is one thing that’s consistent—I work all the time. So wherever I am, I’m working: wondering, wandering and weaving.

Where to work?

Every
where.
––––
I also believe that you can be making progress in any manner that you contemplate—in the creative journey—notes, markings, poems and arrangements,
in—and of—the
stones, leaves and dirt.

To the nature of “remote” work that we’ve all had familiarity with over the course of the last couple of years, my relationship to distanced work is far longer—decades, actually, towards the idea of working, roving, writing, designing, building strategy or tactical planning somewhere other than the office(s) downtown, or around people. Being with people is critical—to creative collaboration, being away from people is equally important. The verse of conversations are counterbalanced in the silence of directed attention.

I have the following contemplations—written in 2010—on working remotely:

I love being around people, exploring ideas, sharing thinking and being in close connection with clients and colleagues. I’ll drive or fly hundreds of miles to do that.
I’ll drive or fly hundreds of miles, as well, to get away from that.

THERE ARE ADVANTAGES. AND THERE ARE DISADVANTAGES.

1.
The idea of doing something with, and around, people is important.
It teaches you the manners and etiquette of being with people—and communicating with them.

I find a surprising lack of skill among some, in this simple gesture of connection—listening, in particular, and knowledgable, leadership guidance in presentation, meaningful organization of ideas—and the expression of them, live: eye to eye.

There are huge advantages to connecting with people live: eye to eye. You can sense more to who they are—if you can truly see them. I’ve noted an increasing tendency among colleagues that sending an email or text is sufficient to assure connection. I get emails from employees, when I’m only a matter of feet away, rather than stopping by to ask a question or confirm an approach. I then might see the email at 10.00pm that evening, and completely miss the question, the timing, and the answer. That goes for me, too.

What that says is that it’s far better to be linking, quickly to comment,
then to presume that electronic media will suffice.
That is, when you’re there.

2.
The idea of doing nothing with, and around, people is important.
To the concept of seeking organizational solitude, I find that days will pass in my attempts to write out complex strategy, written documents for messaging, planning for complicated communications or interview and brand auditions. Finally, I will head out—to be somewhere alone, take a brake, and seek the quiet of focused contemplation. I’m still linked-in, everywhere, but I’m not surrounded by pressing issues that constantly distract my focus.

A fresh set of tools to work with—perhaps completely non digital, explore and dig-in to
for differentiated explorations.

Returning to the notions of attention and intentional action, the idea of taking the time to be away, working remotely to the scene, allows for that sense of continuous attention to the multiplicity of actions that are tied to doing the work, to running a business (which can be like sprinting, it would appear—there are not a lot of respites) as well as the centering tasks that need to be directed as part of the premise of refreshment. That presumes that you’re roving in a manner, or working remotely in a way, that allows you to be a sentinel of what’s happening—where you are not present. There’s something, as well, to being remote—working remotely—and really not being connected at all. Work and be silent.

It’s been years since that’s happened to me—being remote, and completely without cognizance of what’s happening, at Girvin, with clients, relationships. I don’t see that as something that’s happening soon—except, superficially, in the construct of Covid, where remoteness was de rigueur.

Making working place, special— with ritual, collected objects of meaning, beauty, ideas, points of discovery and inspirations.

Some meditations on remote work:
• Contemplation, should be seen, in scene, in the context of the original etymon of the word: “with temple” —from the Latin, con + templum. Think of your remote work as specially distinctive—something sacred, to be cherished and held as an embraceable ideal.
• Create a special place for your remote work. If you must work away, as many of us have been— or have the special chance to do that—create a special way in which that character can be savored. Remote work isn’t a permanent scenario, it could be seen as irksome—since it’s lonelier. But too, it could be seen as a momentary ripple in the time of being, since we all know that we’ll be returning to the flip side of complete and protective remoteness, to opportunities to share live, explore life-working scenarios that are hands-on, hands-in, collaborations.
• Think of the remote mind. Considering the original meaning of the word, remotus, from the Latin, seen and heard in the 15th century—it was about being “removed”—to move back, and away, from something. That remote viewing allows you to be seeing, and thinking, about problems in a way that’s distant. I call this—since 2010— walking around a problem—in the manner of circumambulation, more specifically, a circumspection — you’re seeing it from varying perspectives.
• Bracket time for silence: sometimes, to remoteness, it’s all the more reason for everyone to want to talk to you. Be quiet, retreat in silence. You can always think better when your mouth isn’t working.

My remote studio, 95 miles from Seattle, the Iron Springs Park, OseanStudios, Copalis Beach

Sometimes being the warrior of the way, being incessantly on the road, you must be the remote sentinel perpetually. Standing in airports, seeking a plug location for power, I listen to people simply trying to make connections—even frantically: they’re trying to get home, metaphorically.

They’re trying to find a home where they can be. As a worker—in the space of intentional knowledge your home will be where your heart is; that’s where the best thinking will percolate—and others will benefit in the rippling of your refreshed ideas.

Remove yourself from the fray, and perhaps you might see better.

Tim
–––
BUILDING LOVEBRANDS

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2001: A Space Odyssey

IN 1968, I WAS FIRST STRUCK BY THE NOTION
OF INTEGRATED DESIGN.
I WAS 15.

When I think about powerful moments of design discovery, it was likely Stanley Kubrick’s film, 2001: A Space Odyssey that taught me about the idea of thematic consistency, crossing from one discipline to another, particularly in storytelling built space. There were, of course, many striking visual moments, which became an emblematic stylistic reference for Stanley’s filmic art and actor direction—but I remember being struck by the present day to future analogues in currently understood experiences, metamorphosed into a future state impression of hotel lobby interiors.

2001: A Space Odyssey | The Hilton Lobby

Obviously, I never saw anything like that. Neither did most of us—except those working for NASA and the Apollo program. Later, I had the astonishing experience of heading to Cape Canaveral for the launch of an Apollo Mission 13, 1970.

But, in a manner, the idea of integrating design messaging in an interior design construct has to get to typography—and this too was an early inspiration—the intra/extra graphics
on the interiors and livery of the space ships.

2001: A Space Odyssey | HAL 9000 in the guidance center

I was struck by the disciplined precision of the set design systems,
from the stark, almost retro-modernist take on furniture to the subtle insinuations of typographic language and early interpretations of UI in the context of guidance—or the unforgettable “exploding bolts.”

But, as ever, to the cinematic collaborations of Stanley Kubrick [another note @girvin.com]—lensing and industrial design production strategy with Doug Trumbull—[who GIRVIN worked with later;] for me, it all speaks to detailing typography in placemaking storytelling—
cinematic and otherwise.

For GIRVIN, this speaks to the alphabetic treatment of placemaking, to my thinking, building custom fonts particularly for buildings and architectural or brand-related renderings, a proprietary font,

built specifically to align with the design spiritual intention of the building.

For KohnPedersenFox’s building in Seattle, that’s passed through a string of corporate hands, working with their firm and Jon Runstad’s team at Wright Runstad Development, we designed a hyper-classical font in support of their classically derived expressions.

We designed a custom font for the Nordstrom family and their international identity obviously with a deep bow to Hermann Zapf—in a newly customized expression—slightly taller, with an expanded curvature, as in exterior signage,

interior departmental signage and a string of print and packaging applications.

For Massimo Vignelli and his then studio design director Michael Bierut, we designed a font specifically for a building signage project—customized to match a particularly disciplined deco-condensed and industrial rendering, as in:

Of course, we’ve designed others that cross from signage applications
to print and broadcast, as well as set design for CBS Studios in Manhattan.

What drove me to looking at typographical alphabet systems for signage came from years of working in retail—naming and designing campaigns for Bloomingdales, Neiman Marcus, Jordan Marsh, John Wanamaker, and Nordstrom.

For a multiplicity of identity-related assignments, GIRVIN built-out font systems, for products—like bikes, restaurants, motion pictures, [Sliver,] even special airline applications.

People
read.

And when people come to a place, the thoroughness with which it’s made,
could influence every little [or large] touchpoint—including the tuning of the font.

1968.
2015.
Simple. Industrial. Extraterrestrial.

Designed by NASA
–––

G E T
O U T
T H E R E.
–––
Tim Girvin | Queen Anne Studios | Seattle
Brand linguistics, bespoke brands
GIRVIN designs custom typographic systems

The post GIRVIN’s Custom Font Design for Architecture appeared first on Girvin | Strategic Branding & Design.

THE INTERIOR PATTERNED DESIGN LANGUAGE OF TALISMANIKA

GIRVIN’S SYMBOLIC DESIGN SEQUENCING FOR INTERIORS, FURNITURE AND GRAPHICAL LANGUAGE IN PLACEMAKING.

Any designer knows that a simple plane, an empty piece of paper, a coverless book, an empty package or the “undefined” skin of a shopfront is a presence without place—there’s no story, there’s no personality, there’s no…nothing.

As a student of transformation—the shifting of nothingness to fullness, I’m particularly intrigued by the history of this idea: the nature of a single mark that eradicates the nothingness of open and unresolved space into the marked planar characteristics of a graphical signature that re-defines it—a mark, simple as it might be, articulates dimensionality, directional presence and spatial recognizance—a reconnaissance of design—which etymologically reaches to the Latin derivation, designare and speaks to signare, and the “mark” of the sign, signum. Obviously, there are broader implications to the notion of a “sign,” L. signe, “the gesture of a hand,” an “omen or portend—the military “ensign,” the signal—and thereby, “significance.”

As designers, our work is inherently about that transformative act, which has a magical implication, making a sign signals a kind of visual alchemy, a transmutation from one plane of consciousness to another tier of perception, newly defined. A mark makes new.

I thought about this as a sequencing, which as a spell-making transmogrification. that has the power to “say something, tell a story, list features, define a place, protect, narrate or attract layers of meaning. For thousands of years, making marks was imbued with a magical intention, signs as signals of planar and consciousness shifts, to that, historically, books of alphabetic phrasings and symbolic marks were gathered into a “spell book,” known as a “grammar” or to the French rendering, a grimoire.

GIRVIN made its own grimoire—a “book of signs,” as in the journey from the nothing to the everything, drafting archetypal symbols as a sequential explication.

This 15’ book plays to the rhythm of a empty expanse to a progressive revelation of key symbolic gestures, drawn with a large brush in an ori-hon style of folding book, as in the classical book form of Asian, finger-turning as a contactless process of review [no fingers on the artful side of the pages—the pages are turned
underneath as a sliding pagination.]

The book flows from one symbolic evidence to another,
as a kind of migration of ancient thinking.

The first revelation would be
the nothing.

To the tool of somethingness—the making objective place.

The first stroke of placemaking—the dot,
from which all other marks come.

The delineation of place—the second stroke of demarcation.

Interlacement.

The square—the quaternary earth.

Containment, mapping and progression.

Dimension and direction—
skyward, earthward, the East, the West.

The crossroads.

The circle, the arc of the sky—containment.

The seed circle in the ring—
the place of presence in containment.

And the interplay of the one in the everything.

.
That process was built out into a booklet, which you can
review yourself, in a reach to, for a minimal cost and handling fee.

The idea of this expression, horizontally, I’d implemented earlier as a furniture idea, mapping objects with strokes in support of symbolic ideas derived from the deeper meanings of signs—their deep archetypal context.

Drawn in the same way, same tools, but on living surfaces—cleaved sections of fallen, urban harvested timber, for furniture and interiors.

Which applies to other things—arrangements—
in a kind of symbolic power play.

I’ve been calling that Talismanika—and, in partnering with a manufacturer, Coriander Designs, along with their brand Meyer Wells—the original supplier of the band-sawed, fallen timber—I used in the beginning, we’ve been looking towards a larger scale buildout, marketing and representation as discrete lines inside their brand offerings—Studio Set.

Large patterned installations.

Accoustical tile patterning.

Customized messaging.

See StudioSet.
Read more on talismanic art in architecture.

Tim Girvin | OseanStudios
Principal, Founder and Chief Creative Officer
GIRVIN | Strategic Branding & Design
www.girvin.com

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WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT IT, A KEY POINT OF RESONANCE IN BRAND EXPERIENTIALITY* COMES DOWN TO THE HOLISM OF SENSATION.

How does it feel?
How unforgettable is the holism of your feelings—
or your guests feelings—about it?

For many of us, that would be what we see—but combining that, it intertwines with the senses of touch, of taste, hearing and the smell of elemental experience.

As brand designers, many of us rely on sight first—as a directed response to stimuli towards the mind and its interpretation of momentary experience. As experiencers of place, there are other senses that come into play—like balance, a state of presence in the compass points of stance and human placement in place.

In examining procession, human movement through place, patterning reveals itself as the beginning of storytelling—which, rightfully, one would begin at the street. Passing street presentation, then what happens?

Like this entry scrim designed by Milton Glaser as a narrative of Himalayan-inspired cloud forms at the Rubin, lower West side, Manhattan, NY.

When I walk a procession of environment and its story for me, I’m sensing it as a “place,” as discrete from the vague planar character of space—a “nothingness.” As brand designers, we’re looking towards the nature of “somethingness,” as in some-thing that, as a sensate encounter, is memorable.

You might think of a restaurant; see our blog observations on sensational-related design notes of wide-awareness experience narratology; which is obviously spherical as a touch-encounter—the circular wholeness captures all the senses. You see the food, taste it, hear the sounds of the experiencers and preparations—and there’s the smell of spices, baked goods, cooked meals, condiments and confections.

For my circumspective walk around—and that’s what I call it—“walking around,” I’m embracing the space as a broadening web of stimuli.

I feel the gigantic “air” of this temple, drumming my fingers on the massive columns—a rhythmic patterning, there—the brand.
The sound is a substrate pulse to the prayers.
My feel are bare—I’m open to feelingness.

Walking there, another story narrates its patterning as a approach an ancient compound—bleached and split stones, arranged in rippling waves.

Underneath a building, I’m looking for stories—how was this place made, what did it do, what narratives lie beneath—there’s a story at the street, the lobby, the entry procession—and what of an excavatory examination?

Even the earth, its minerals, have a patterning instance—they’re telling tales of construction, old grinding tools, digging and gatherings of sediment—their scent speaks the pattern language of their journey here—at the undersurface of structure, to the now of this visit.

The mirror reflects back the scale and patterning of the fenestration—its own rhythmic patterning, which reflects an icier countenance—it’s not friendly, or organically inspired, like the spire behind it.

Even in the roughest and most forgotten places, a patterning of place could find itself in the most delicate. For example, floriated attempt to express a human moment in
the touch of the natural world.

Minuscule or gigantic—there are sensate activations. That could be the stance of a single edifice, with the patterned resolutions of its placement—just enough sidewalk around to actually look at the scale of the brand experience. Even in the scent of the mist, there are moments of wonder, a storytelling of place-made brand that should be unforgettable.

As I walk Istanbul, I spy another narrative—the hammered grill work of a Ottoman compound, with the windblown gesture of one thing that counterbalances the human character of its manufacture.
Pattern, place, story, sensation.

See it, smell it, walk the balance—touching, hear it.
And maybe—a taste?

*Experientiality — design thinking founded on a multi-sensory strategy of experience development: integrated holism.

Tim Girvin
GIRVIN | Strategic Branding & Design
www.girvin.com

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