Girvin (Seattle)

[Google search on Girvin]

From the website:

History
"Girvin's work focuses on community, relationships and communication. And how this practice and attention adds value to your business. We see them as being aligned - if there are messages that need to be expressed, it's a matter of creating resonance, in relevance, in those messages. Everyone is different in how they experience things, how they perceive content and the visualization of information. It's our role to see, separate and define this orientation. Understand that dynamic of experience. Design for that construct of exchange.

We create links between people, based on over 30 years of working internationally in orchestrating messages in all media. What is the story? Our story, our practice, is fixed on the strategic implications of emotion in connecting people to ideas and ideals. For us, everything we do is about this human magnetism. How does one feel, how is one drawn in compelled attraction, to something (and what results, in testing, to confirm that feeling).

And your brand is only about that - how well people understand your story. And how they embrace the story of your brand. How they really care about it. And how you really care about it. And then, finally, how people connect with each other in the community that lives around your brand. It's in the telling that is important. That's our work. What's your story?"

The Blog

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My Take

Website:
Beautiful site with lots of case studies categorized clearly. "The story" is the central insight and it's expression the essential product. Process is important enough to have 5 branded proprietary systems each worth a paragraph of brandspeak™. And bios are short and standard.

A standout uniqueness is the site having alternate translations for Japanese and Arabic languages. Smart!


Blog:
The blog is where you really get inside the head of Mr. Girvin. Tons of posts, each a studied and thoughtful exploration of an idea. The commentaries about branding, marketing, and storytelling (among other topics) show the thinking that goes into the firms work. And the regularity of his posting gives one ample reasons to return and explore more.


Weaknesses:
From a design standpoint, the only thing I had a problem with on either the website or the blog was readability. (The size of the type in some blog graphics and within the website.) Which I thought was odd for a design firm that's strength is typography.

If the goal is to project "design principal as hero" these tools do it. The voice is consistent between website and blog and appears to be just that of Mr. Girvin. If everyone else there is as thoughtful it's not apparent.

(Disclosure: I've been a Girvin fan since 1983.)