GIRVIN

10/14/2026

The Cult of Wabi Sabi

Exploring the *Experientiality of Sensation in the Aesthetics of Age, Utility and Beauty The image above, the entry to the Fukuju Sake Brewery in Kobé, Japan, was taken during a GIRVIN project mission. It’s a mix of fire-seared timber, rough-chiseled granite and aggregate flooring. When I was younger, I had a proclivity for rust. That remains to this day....

Exploring the *Experientiality of Sensation in the Aesthetics of Age, Utility and Beauty The image above, the entry to the Fukuju Sake Brewery in Kobé, Japan, was taken during a GIRVIN project mission. It’s a mix of fire-seared timber, rough-chiseled granite and aggregate flooring. When I was you...

10/12/2026

It’s out! Our client, Tom Roberts’s new book! He knows flow—as a race car driver, stunt pilot and a polymath—and he writes about flow and his process for living your best life. Check it out here: https://feartoflow.com

10/09/2026

Remote Viewing | The Absence of Presence in An AI Working World

I’ve been working in, walking around, an AI world, as a brand strategist and designer, in the tactility of a cocooning sphere, a place to utilize any LLM, but you, user, work In your own realm—private, proprietary, protected. Yet the relationship is recollective. As sovereign in your own work world, you act in a remote construct. It’s your world, and you make your own way—...

I’ve been working in, walking around, an AI world, as a brand strategist and designer, in the tactility of a cocooning sphere, a place to utilize any LLM, but you, user, work In your own realm—private, proprietary, protected. Yet the relationship is recollective. As sovereign in your own work wo...

09/30/2026

Another Notation On The Journey of the Journal

What about flow? The fluency of ideas, drafts of inspiration—and, as a wanderer, the meander of mindlessness? As I’d mentioned earlier, the journey of the journal is a way of managing the today, which then becomes yesterday, that draws a line to the future. You look back, recall and re-collect—and, as you journey back, study your observations and explorations, and you get somewhere to the now, the today and the future…...

What about flow? The fluency of ideas, drafts of inspiration—and, as a wanderer, the meander of mindlessness? As I’d mentioned earlier, the journey of the journal is a way of managing the today, which then becomes yesterday, that draws a line to the future. You look back, recall and re-collect.....

09/24/2026

The Journey of the Journal | The Book of the Mind

Your Mind Deserves a Room of Its Own I taught classes in journal making—which I see as a kind of room, a palace of memories and inspirations—a portal of collections, a gathering point, a framework where private ideas flourish in graphical form. It becomes a protected and proprietary space—a place that you’ve made just for your yourself, an exploratory conclave....

09/16/2026

The Script of Odysseus

Design strategies, temporal tactics in typography and the palæographic narrative The calligraphy above is a rendering of ODYSSEUS [ΔΟ-ΥΣ-ΕΥ-Σ] I crafted in the ancient Greek boustrophedon style starting right to left, then left to right, the back again. This was an early inspiration—ancient Greek literature and the markings that made it. Vessel with double alphabet inscription, showing new letters ΥΧ[Φ]Ψ, and ΥΧΦΨΩ....

Design strategies, temporal tactics in typography and the palæographic narrative The calligraphy above is a rendering of ODYSSEUS [ΔΟ-ΥΣ-ΕΥ-Σ] I crafted in the ancient Greek boustrophedon style [as the ox plows] starting right to left, then left to right, the back again. This was an early in...

09/10/2026

Designing Disneyland & Imagining Collaborative Innovation

Working Imagination | The Imagineers at Disneyland In my history as a design leader, we worked around various propositions of entertainment at Disney—not only working on films, but Disneyland itself, in a string of calls from the Imagineering teams at Disney, Glendale, CA. These were patent-related calls—new technology applications that Imagineering had produced involving the development of mist-generated projections, moveable props,...

[Image shot onsite at Disneyland | Tim Girvin] Working Imagination | The Imagineers at Disneyland In my history as a design leader, we worked around various propositions of entertainment at Disney—not only working on films, but Disneyland itself, in a string of calls from the Imagineering teams at...

09/09/2026

What if you were a brand with no name? Our GirvinIdeator® does just that, for 30 years. We name things.

09/03/2026

Volatility and Brand Alchemy

Everything changes; everything is on fire. Nothing is the same as it was; everything is the same as it shall be. In the mist of experience, it’s all changing—still, standards flow, and patterning emerges. While everything is in flux, everything goes as it has from the past—yet, now, the speed of the wind of change are accelerating. It is flitting, fleeting, faster....

Everything changes; everything is on fire. Nothing is the same as it was; everything is the same as it shall be. In the mist of experience, it’s all changing—still, standards flow, and patterning emerges. While everything is in flux, everything goes as it has from the past—yet, now, the speed ...

08/27/2026

Brand allegories | The Symbolism of the Knot

Certain symbols follow us through life, resurfacing at pivotal moments until we recognize them as guides. For brand strategist Tim Girvin, that recurring symbol is the knot—an ancient motif of inextricability, cycling, and containment found from Tibetan prayer flags to the Lindisfarne Gospels to the geometric mastery of Islamic art. Tracing the knot's journey through Celtic tradition and the intricate patterning of Casablanca's Grand Mosque, this piece explores what the eternal knot can teach brand designers about weaving meaning, memory, and connection into the customer experience....

Certain symbols follow us through life, resurfacing at pivotal moments until we recognize them as guides. For brand strategist Tim Girvin, that recurring symbol is the knot—an ancient motif of inextricability, cycling, and containment found from Tibetan prayer flags to the Lindisfarne Gospels to t...