Beginning with "Apocalypse Now," Tim Girvin has designed over 400 film titles.
We present to you his writings about the Process of Branding.

Stanley Kubrick + Douglas Trumbull > Monoliths on Mars During the development of a theatrical advertising campaign — motion picture branding — the best path is to meet with the film crew, the director, the production designer.

Prometheus: Happy Birthday David – Story Actualization Pushing imaginative limits: Ridley Scott: promotional strategies for Prometheus. A couple of weeks back, we wrote a little of our history with the Scott brothers, Ridley and Tony....

Ridley Scott, the TED brand, Alien and the quest for Prometheus Powerful ideas, invention and brand re-alignments, newly imagined. I’m looking for surprise, beauty, spectacle — designing it, looking at it, seeing it, extending that story — the telling of it.

Designing Impossible Missions Hand-Built Titling Fonts in Movie Logos; the Brand Identity for Tom Cruise. Seeing Ghost Protocol... reminded me of earlier efforts — creating at the start, to define brand style for Mission: Impossible.

Bossological Exploring broadcast identity design in the context of politics, Kelsey Grammer, and Starz newest series: BOSS.

Exploring the legacy of a typographic design The image comes from the current site/launch of Spielberg and Jackson's pre-launch strategy of the storytelling of Tintin. Working with Nancy Goliger, former EVP Theatrical Advertising, and her team (then) at Paramount Studios.

Palaeography, design, historical context, and the imagination We didn't work on the movie Thor. In about twenty years of working for Paramount Studios and Warner Brothers, in particular, we've worked on literally hundreds of identity design programs . . .

Filmic Mythology: Brand Storytelling + Cinema The folkloric intuition, legendary dimensions of the lensed visualization. There are cycles, repeating patterning, in the engagement of story and archetype, mystery and beauty.

Brand Posse | Staging brands and performance: Rodarte Design, community, embracement, love — how does the crowd gather round? And when they do, what is the story that they tell?

True Grit: Exploring the Branding of the American Western The spirit of the cowboy, evinced in brand identity. The notion of identity speaks to a holistic rendition of story — graphically drawn: sensately experienced.

The Architecture, the Mind and the Memory: Notes on the Production and Place Design of "Inception." The metaphor of the mind, architectural design, and the secret of dreams.

The Lost Sketchbooks of Guillermo Del Toro Exploring the journal, the working process and the act of creative development.

Audi and Iron Man | Brand, Story and Product Merchandising Examining Vehicles and Brand Placement. Automobiles represent a fabulous concretion of brands synchronized to complex emotional and value constructs.

Exploring the armory of the iron clad: the graphic identity of Iron Man Elemental examinations of material and technology in cinematic design: Earlier in our history as designers of cinematic identity, we were asked to explore the concept of a cinematic treatment of the legacy of Iron Man.

Oakley | Thermonuclear brand marketing Cinematic brand alignments, at the end of the world.

Identity design, film, and Sherlock Holmes The sense of time in brand: chronology, palaeography, and theatrical accuracy.

The Avatar Brand of James Cameron Early counsel: the strategy on brand identity, for one of the best motion picture brand developers in the world.

Tim Burton at Moma | The Art of the Hand, the Mind, the Imagining Exploring design, art, and imagination: motion picture branding, Tim Burton, and the legacy of Girvin identity and cinematic brand design.

2012: The End of the World (in a couple of years) Exemplars of Apple Messaging and Brand Product Events: Theatricality and entertainment marketing strategy in the presentation of ideas.

Brand, storytelling, presentation, and spectacle: Steve Jobs Exemplars of Apple Messaging and Brand Product Events: Theatricality and entertainment marketing strategy in the presentation of ideas.

Movie titling design: the craft of the hand Exploring brand in the context of experience design and impression: movie picture brand strategy.

Story: brand, humanity, entertainment The string of imagination — never underestimate the connectivity of the right telling.

The End of the World: 9.09.09 Marketing apocalypse, branding oblivion I’ve been studying some thematic elements in Russian society — a sense of myth, Slavic legend and a kind of genetic leaning in the personality of Eastern European storytelling....

Branding another world | Guild Wars 2 Designing the brand as an excursion into the extraordinary: imagination and digital place-making in adventure.

Branding Anguish | The Human Brand Story of Frank McCourt Examining brand design, storytelling and identity in literature and motion pictures.

Vampire Brands | True Blood: the emergence of the darker side. Exploring the fashionability of the preternatural (brand).

Death as a sales tool: human brand passage, brand boost The death of Michael Jackson and brand, emotion, memory and sales. It’s an unfortunate synchrony that unexpected passage boosts the propositions of the selling of that person.

Human+Brand+Love | Michael Jackson I’ve written about that idea of the human brand, which I might more effectively relate to the notion of the “human torch” — a fiery inspiration. Going back, thousands of years, into the mists of proto-history...

Cinematic production design and brand identity Exploring brand in the context of experience design and impression: movie picture brand strategy.

The Soloist | What music means to you? Studying the music, the mind, the meaning — cinematic brand strategy and design.

The Star Trek Logo J.J. Abrams and a return to the authentic identity of Star Trek.

Film Branding | Luc Besson A directorial style, branded, explorations of cinéma du look.

Movie titling sequences, stories and brand The line between the story, the visualization, the brand.

Valkyrie | Tom Cruise | Design Motion picture design, identity, and historical context: visual propaganda.

The Soloist: art, music, and schizophrenia in story Steve Lopez and Nathaniel Ayers: exploring concepts of the visual language of creativity, music, madness — and the warmth of humanity in redemption.

Human Brands | Clint Eastwood Exploring Identity, Logo Evolutions & Story in Motion Picture Design. Notes on the history of the Iron Man brand, the evolution of identity and how it comes to be.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Designing identity in story for film.  I was born under unusual circumstances.

Nobody’s Fool | Designing for Paul Newman Finding the truth in life, in motion pictures, in storytelling and the character of Paul Newman. What a loss. What a legacy. What a man.

Ghosts, Ghost Town, and Ricky Gervais | Paramount + DreamWorks Exploring the illusory: branding ghosts and the veil of what is beyond…

Star Trek 2009 | JJ Abrams, the Brand, the Story & Identity Several years ago I got a call from Paramount Studios to work on a project for JJ Abrams. I’d never heard of him, embarrassingly enough...

Branding Batman | The Dark Knight Advertising Campaign Exploring brand in the context of experience design and impression: movie picture brand strategy.

Speed Racer, V for Vendetta, The Matrix Brand Evolutions and the Wachowski Legacy.  Exploring brand in context — from the comical imagination to the full screen.

Indiana Jones | Pulp Fiction, Saturday Matinees, Serial Adventures The design heritage of the Indiana Jones franchise. Reaching back into the deep territory of my imagination — and my history as a long-running movie goer, I stride the aisles of Fox Theater...

The Branding of Iron Man Exploring Identity, Logo Evolutions & Story in Motion Picture Design. Notes on the history of the Iron Man brand, the evolution of identity and how it comes to be.

Tony Stark | The Iron Man Anthony Edward “Tony” Stark is the man in disambiguation — confused on one front, solid as iron, in another. His metal clad skin covers a soul that is torn and sheared in seething pain. Iron, clasps heart.

The Spiderwick Chronicles: Exploring story in journal narrative For about 15 years, I’ve been using the journal as a kind of narrative to my life. More like a scrapbook, it’s a gathering of ideas and experiences that relate to what I’ve seen, reacted to, contemplating, in the spirit of my creative examinations.

Gucci: The Movie; Yves Saint Laurent: The Collection Given some intriguing alignments, it’s time to consider film in the context of luxury storytelling. And there are two present time movements that speak to this abrupt emergence.

The American Western: The Myth & the Meaning Or, how I’ve loved the Western Film — as a story concept — since I was a child.  A couple of weeks back, I went to see "No Country for Old Men" in NYC...

Beowulf: the movie What calls, from ancient halls, the spirit of that other distant world, far more than a thousand, five hundred years back in the balled skein of time? Beowulf!

In Defense of Tom Cruise | Valkyrie Probably the wrong wave, I’d imagine. But that’s the point of the story to be told. And let’s tell that story.

Notes on the Matrix Design There’s another symbolic value to the O and the 1 beyond the nature of the digital translation of content and interpretation. O, the curved enclosure — is, in sequence etymologically — from Sanskrit — the sunya...

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