Workshopping allegories and brand soul I was thinking about the question of inquiry and exploration, the search—reaching in(to people)—listening to them, learning from them, and gathering their impressions and ideas. Search for it, listen to them, what does that look like? But more so, to the construct of what they love, what they love doing, […] The post Drawing Love | Mapping Brands appeared first on Girvin | Strategic Branding & Design ..read more

Portfolios, collectible design processions and creating metaphorical gallery experiences. It’s an interesting contemplation to think about brand work, design, and value. Surely there is a lot of conversation about design as a value-inducement to brand propositions. Well-designed brands make them usefully relevant, emotionally viable, resonantly in tune with brand relationships—and we’ve written extensively about this […] The post Designing Limited Editions—Journeys, Shopfronts, Galleries appeared first on Girvin | Strategic Branding & Design ..read more

Could a brand be so beautiful that it should be made into jewelry? “Sure,” says Susy Korb, an earlier Creative Director at Tiffany&Co., she asked, “Could we create a font that could be used in our print, as well as for actual fabrication into precious metals?” In our experience with laser and water-jet-related incisions in […] The post Brand Jewelry | Designing Brands for Jewelry appeared first on Girvin | Strategic Branding & Design ..read more

Everyone has a powerful connection to their mothers. My mother, Lila Lee Shaw Girvin died this past week. And it called into contemplation all of the things that one thinks about in death—of anyone near. You’re thinking, “they were here, now they’re gone. Forever.” It’s something to contemplate that she was my matrix, my inspiratrix, […] The post Death Comes Home | Creativity, Motherhood and Lila Lee Shaw Girvin appeared first on Girvin | Strategic Branding & Design ..read more

The Quest for the Most Beautiful | Brands, Enterprises, Narratives and the People That Make Them. In our life journey, the threading of our work, as creatives—people that create— we listen, absorb, gather, interpret and make meaning. We work to import and deliver visual and messaged content in a manner that is compelling to a […] The post Brands that are beautiful appeared first on Girvin | Strategic Branding & Design ..read more

How Bright the Future? Could a Creative Brief be…Brief? Not really. Brevity isn’t the point, it’s the concision of the document. This is a talk that I was asked to offer at P&G, then later again at Mark Anthony Brands—the beverage group in Vancouver, BC., then progressively, in other team related educational contexts, including the […] The post Writing Creative Brief Strategy for Brands appeared first on Girvin | Strategic Branding & Design ..read more

The quest for where you were, and where you are now—and, as we’ve asked, “what do you know?” You might just never know. I’m walking out there, walking around remote pathways wild rivers, swaying bridges, down in ancient buildings and pathways. And while I’m down there, out there, I realize, “wait, I’m lost, where am […] The post Brands, what do you know, now? appeared first on Girvin | Strategic Branding & Design ..read more

Of course, as a brand person, a place-maker—as you are—we’re thinking: “if you’re not here, and not over there, then where are you? Do you know where you are? Or are you nowhere?” I’ve been talking A LOT about placemaking—and planning spaces, making places—since I’m walking around the edge of a move of one GIRVIN […] The post If you’re not here, do you k[no]w where? appeared first on Girvin | Strategic Branding & Design ..read more

A stride at Bláskógabyggð, Suðurland, Iceland I was questioning a brand client—and we were talking about the notion of soul, the spirit of the brand a human enterprise—and the mirroring of a human maker, and what they make in the journey of a brand. Everyone knows, if you know me, that the origins of the […] The post The Long Route | Getting Out There To The Brand New World appeared first on Girvin | Strategic Branding & Design ..read more

It happens to the best of us—there’s a confident gait, the gallant stride, a bold sprint and then: there’s a stumble. It rumbles in the background—all the time—the risk of misstep. Personally, I contemplate my own faltering—and there have been many. Moves that I thought were bold and smart, but somehow I hadn’t thought-through the implications […] The post Brand Stumbling appeared first on Girvin | Strategic Branding & Design ..read more