DEVELOPMENT

Illustrating
entertainment:
A reflection
by Tim Girvin, with Chie Masuyama and Kristin Summers

he odyssey narrated in this essay is wonderfully personal.

T Tim Girvin, with help from Chie Masuyama and Kristin
Summers, reveals how youthful enthusiasm for the art of
typography matured into a unique talent for designing motion
picture identities. What is significant is that the lessons go beyond
the personal. Research and a thoughtful process are essential to
identity design; small details make a big difference; and what starts
as graphics can quickly evolve into a marketing strategy and a
platform for building a coherent organization.

(from left to right) Kristin Summers,
Assistant Designer; Tim Girvin, Principal;
Chie Masuyama, Senior Designer,
Girvin Inc.
Each of us has arrived at our practice in
brand and design management in dif-
ferent ways. After all, the very word
design (from the Latin signare, to mark)
implies individuality. Design is a
description, a “de-scribing” of emotion
in space. To scribe a line, so to speak, is
a way to communicate with another
human being. It is “drawing” or express-
ing explanation, in a way that attracts
and compels the viewer in some way.
Obviously, the practice of design is
about the intermingling of relation-
ships between our skills and our
clients, and ultimately their audiences,
whatever the context may be.
Design is about speaking human to
human. With its seemingly endless
permutations and expansion, design
can speak to one person or to millions
of fellow human beings. This article
explores a particular avenue of my his-
tory as a designer and the way it led my
work into one specialized arena: the
work of communicating the intent of a
motion picture through its identity.
The background
As a child, I was fascinated by the
natural world. I was the kind of person
who had multiple jars of insects, plants,
and other living ephemera in his room.
Spiders, anthills, lizards, and clinging
vines created a kind of jungle, through

46 Design Management Journal Winter 2001


which my mother had to make her journey
every day to locate a shoe or a needed shirt for
my expeditions to school. This interest contin-
ued to expand until my college years, when I
began to prepare myself for a career in the bio-
logical sciences. My vision of biology, however,
was ecological and poetic. I was fascinated by
how organisms related to each other—how they
thrived in their own mysterious way in the land,
the sea, the air.
After arriving at the campus, however, I
found that the way to “learning” was to find an
object of study and to, in the classical
“exploratory” sense, cut it apart and kill it. This
vivisectional approach to biology became dis-
heartening. I spent more time with drawings
and lab journals than with the more focused
aspects of the research study. My professor and
counselor talked with me and suggested that I
should consider another area of investigation.
Perhaps “art” might be a desirable path. Growing
up in an artistic yet scientifically inclined family,
my mother a painter and my father a surgeon, I
had spent many hours drawing in my mother’s
studio. Combining text and illustration in biolo-
gy lab journals was a way of combining these
areas of interest. My elaborately conceived labo-
ratory notes then drifted to a new dimension; I
began exploring book design.
Combining text, calligraphic treatments, and illustration was an early
launching point for Tim Girvin’s investigation of letterforms, their
illustrative character and design arrangement.
Transitions
My studies of book production, coupled with
an interest in history, led me to paleography
(Greek, pálai, early, primitive phenomena;
Greek, gráphein, draw, write), the study of the
history of writing. This led to calligraphy
(Greek, kállos, beautiful; Greek, graphos,
Illustrating entertainment: A reflection
writing). The density of this approach to
“design” captivated me, because writing finds
itself expressed, from a cultural perspective, in so
many ways. Objects, epigraphic applications,
manuscripts, scrolled texts, and textiles—the
thread of writing finds its way through the
tapestry of humankind for thousands of years.
My interest in understanding these relationships
continued to expand—I began to explore
architecture, art history, and literature and the
resonant relationships among these expressions.
My questions led me to study the way certain
expressions of a time period or culture find
themselves “built.” Why, for instance, does the
soaring and compressed space of a Medieval
cathedral have a seeming relationship with the
rhythmic and condensed cadence of the Gothic
script? What does the spirit of the open architec-
ture of the Greeks and Romans say about its
culture, particularly when one considers the airy
treatments of its art and its elegantly spacious
expression of the letterform in manuscripts and
stone monuments? What is it about the con-
sciousness of the Islamic world that catalyzed
the engineering of the dome and minaret, the
blazing discipline of Arabic and Persian calligra-
phy and their book arts? It became clear to me
that the letterform, as an object of design, was
coherently linked to other cultural manifesta-
tions, and that the spirit of a culture could find
itself “symbolized” in its style of writing, as well
as in other aspects of the cultural “branding.”
These explorations led me to examine art histo-
ry in many areas of the world, from the stand-
point of study, as well as travel.
The mystery and the spirit
Curiously, writing has always held a special
fascination for humankind. Its origins are fre-
quently wrapped in myth and mystery; virtually
every culture considers writing to have been
delivered to us from a godly plane. Writing is, by
its very nature, the translation of that magical
element, thought, into a designed form. Taking a
fluid idea and transfixing it in time, for a
moment, on a surface—writing can tell a story,
capture a myth, calculate a quantity, or map an
environment. It is a translation that transforms.
Throughout antiquity, from the Tigris Valley
and the Nile, extending into Eastern Europe,
across to India and the further eastern reaches of
Asia, writing has always had a special power.
Design Management Journal Winter 2001 47
Designing Identity—Designing Brand
Even today, certain cultures regard the alphabet
as a series of signs laden with their own subtle
symbolism, if not divinatory aspects. As I began
to explore these relationships, my area of inquiry
spread eastward, to China and Japan.
In studying the art history of Chinese civi-
lization, a student discovers the Six Canons of
Hsieh Ho. Living during the southern Ch’i
dynasty in the early 6th century, Hsieh Ho was
considered the first systematic writer on art,
though he was also a
painter. Ho’s most
Figure 1
compelling writing
focused on his six
canons of painting. For
me, the first canon was
the most powerful.
This opening principle
speaks of “spiritual
rhythm,” “life force
movement,” “spirit res-
onance,” and “vital
rhythm.” Any painting
or work of art in accor-
dance with the canons
of Hsieh Ho has to
have “vital energy” to
be called a true paint-
ing (the entire transla-
The Chinese character Ch’i is an ideogram of the four tion is “the rhythmic
elements beneath an enclosing “altar” stroke, with the vitality of the breath of
rising triplicate brushstrokes above, symbolizing the heaven”). This is the
“vapor” of the sacrifice. The meaning of the character is
most potent of the
“spirit” or life force—a driving element in capturing the
canons of Hsieh Ho, its
central spark of identity.
fifth and most para-
mount principle. Ch’i
is the first character from this translation and
became a captivating point in my own explo-
ration of his approach to illustration (Latin, il,
in; Latin, lustrare, make bright, illuminate).
Ch’i, which represents “heavenly breath,” is a
composition of a vertical cross with one grain of
rice or other offering in each of the four quarters
(figure 1). Above the “wrapping up” stroke are
three strokes, which abstractly suggest the sacrifi-
cial breath, the “vapor,” of the offering above the
“altar.” This character became emblematic of my
interest in conveying an idea of vitality. Every cul-
ture has considered the notion of life force in its
vocabulary (Hebrew: ruach; Sanskrit: prana;
Greek: pneuma; Latin: spiritus). My exploration of
the letterform led me to consider how to capture
48 Design Management Journal Winter 2001
the vitality of a thought in a written expression.
Thoughts are alive; hence their expression in an
appropriate letterform arrangement becomes a
way of establishing this “resonance.” Much of my
early work, 30 years ago, plays on this notion of
energy (as William Blake called it, “eternal
delight”) and its arrangement in text.
Off to the movies
How does all of this relate to motion picture
identities? Movie identities, or the design of
titling treatments for motion pictures, often must
represent a concrete version of the spirit of the
film, encapsulated in the deliberate styling and
arrangement of characters. Any design manager
involved with the treatment of a corporate
brandmark understands the challenges in using
the alphabet as a way to convey a sense of emo-
tion and personality. The same is true in the
world of film: Your challenge is to capture its
story in a graphic signature that will be under-
stood by an audience scattered all over the world.
My interest in freeform expression and ener-
gy within the character of the alphabet was for-
malized with a call from an agent for Francis
Ford Coppola. He was working on Apocalypse
Now and asked me to produce some examples
similar to material Coppola had seen published.
He was interested in a certain aggressive styling
reflected in some work he’d seen in a magazine.
By this time, I had begun to build my design
practice with several employees and diverse
projects in corporate and advertising communi-
cations. Never having done this before, I began
to explore the history of motion picture titling.
Identity, as associated with motion pictures,
Storyboards, daily photo still images, scripts, set designs, and video-
taped “dailies,” as well as meetings with director and studio, form the
basis for an early understanding of the film’s direction.

has a history that starts at the beginning of the
twentieth century. The style of the typography,
its arrangement on a poster, its coupling with
images has undergone fascinating transitions
over the decades. However, the principle of
titling has always been to collectively illustrate
the spirit of the film property and to aid in its
marketing. I developed a set of brush-drawn
treatments on Japanese hand-made paper, the
character and arrangement of which were
expressed in the film logotype. Innocently, I sent
the original drawings—never to see them again.
The final logotype with its vertical styling,
brush-drawn character, and sliding underlying
brushstroke reflected my brutal renderings,
ultimately detailed by another practitioner.
Time periods, nuances of stroke, weight,
letterform construction, coloration, and tech-
nique were a language I had already mastered,
although it was a language in which few others
were fluent. Bear in mind that during this time
period, some 25 years ago, “hand lettering,” or
the calligrapher’s art, was largely forgotten. Only
a handful of practicing professionals offered
their services to communications design. Most
practiced an arcane “penmanship” that found
its principal application in diplomas and
more-obscure uses. The idea of taking this art
and adding to it the notion of energy and
expressiveness was relatively new.
The world of a film
As I developed a special position as a “free-
lancer” in type design, I found myself connected
with the film industry on complex design
assignments. To understand more about how a
film was made, or what the intent of a motion
picture might be, I traveled to sets to meet with
directors, producers, and marketing vice presi-
dents for the major motion picture studios.
Films are clearly complex undertakings. In
many ways, they become (from the moment of
their development) a miniature corporation, a
mobile business unit. After a script is accepted
and considered for a motion picture vehicle, an
entire army is mobilized—usually under the
leadership of a director and producer in con-
junction with a studio’s buy-in. The stars have
their role in making these determinations; writ-
ers weigh in on the storytelling—the entire
milieu is fraught with complex relationships,
hidden deals, postures, and positionings.
Illustrating entertainment: A reflection
Ultimately, once the script is converted into a
screenplay, the business mechanism unfolds.
Massive documentary artillery is poised, loca-
tions are scouted, sets are built, properties are
collected, and the lensing begins. Each day,
against a complex synchrony, the movie story is
told, shot, and studied. My opportunity to dive
into this world allowed me to visit the sets, con-
nect with actors, and see the tedious develop-
ment and multiple takes in set design, lighting,
sound, shooting angles, and minuscule docu-
mentation. My exploration of this world contin-
ues to this day.
In each of these illustrated examples, there
was a script that had to be read; a group of pho-
tographs from the set that had to be considered;
videos or dailies that had to be watched; meet-
ings with studio executives, actors, directors, and
producers that required consideration; and, of
course, a marketing effort that needed to be
readied. Some films were, during their testing,
changed from one position to another. For
instance, Lethal Weapon, which I had the
opportunity to work on, started out as a vehicle
that was found in an audience focus review to be
too violent and extreme. Marketing executives
accordingly changed its positioning to a more
stylish and accessible posture; the story line was
adjusted. The logo changed; so did the advertis-
ing. Streets of Fire, which we worked on before
shooting began, had a darker side that ultimately
had to be “lightened” for its successful delivery
to the marketplace. We worked on Once Upon a
Time in America for Sergio Leone before he had
any real studio backing, so the logo for the film
became a kind of packaging device for this
monumental film undertaking; it was part of
selling the story to captivate investors. In this
way, the movie identity plays a role often far in
advance of the shooting. And it can survive until
A variety of typefaces are created for film productions. Most identities
are done in customized, altered typefaces. For The Last Boy Scout, a
tailored font, derived from the typographic architecture of the film’s
logotype, was created for use in the opening title sequence.
Design Management Journal Winter 2001 49
Designing Identity—Designing Brand
after the movie has entered into the market.
Finally, the movie identity functions as only a
small treatment seen in the daily newspaper’s
movie advertising section.
In some ways, a film’s identity has a life of its
own that finds itself emblazoned on camera and
set shipping crates, T-shirts, crew hats, or direc-
tors’ chairs as part of a “spiritual” motivator for
the team. Working on Space Cowboys with Clint
Eastwood, it appeared that the identity needed
to be finalized far in advance of the actual shoot-
ing of the film, and merchandising the concept
of the film to the production team was part of
the challenge. I had an opportunity to work with
Clint Eastwood on several films (including In the
Line of Fire and Unforgiven). In much the same
way, the logotype for Unforgiven was generated
while the shooting was going on in British
Columbia. Before working on that movie, I had
a long discussion with Eastwood about a film he
was getting ready to shoot that involved a west-
ern format with a theme linked to redemption.
The film was not to be an ordinary western, but
instead, a gripping, emotional tale that, as we all
know now, ultimately repositioned the western
as a new entertainment vehicle. Over the course
of the next several months, we worked back and
forth, exploring directions and refinements.
When I begin to work on a film, I follow the
same practice that many of us do: I strive to
understand the client’s needs and positioning,
and the audience. I try to understand the film’s
intent and direction and how its concept might
be “sold.” When I worked with the Wachowski
brothers, Joel Silver, Dan Cracchiolo, and
Warner Brothers on The Matrix, I spent a great
deal of time looking over the storyboards and
talking with the Wachowskis about their inten-
tion. Not surprisingly, the film was completely
worked out, screen by screen, detail by detail, in
elaborate storyboards executed by refugees from
Marvel Comics. It was a masterpiece of style,
After numerous variations, the final design of this film’s title was drawn
with a steel, broad-edged pen on Italian hand-made paper.
50 Design Management Journal Winter 2001
intent, and adventure. The drawings were so out
there I wondered how sets could even be built.
When the Wachowskis described a new anima-
tion they had considered—a special effect that
involved freezing the principal actor in slow
motion while rotating the camera exposures
around the figure—it seemed almost a blue-sky
concept. (This effect is now commonplace in
presentations from Gap jeans to martial arts
sequences in Mission Impossible 2.) The lengthy
exploratory for The Matrix was digging further
and further into the intent of the film to ulti-
mately create an identity that would find its
translation in millions of imprints, its expression
on thousands of product applications.
Where to begin?
What is the actual process of creating an identity
for a film? First, it should be understood that
this work is highly competitive; you are going up
against creative forces within the studios, as well
as advertising agencies and motion picture pro-
motional specialists. The opportunities are hotly
contested, and awarding the work is the result of
judicious consideration. A project invariably
begins with an understanding of strategy, the
audience, and the positioning. We start by col-
lecting hand-drawn sketches and reviewing
them as a team. Directions are selected, custom
digital fonts are built to match the strategy and
style, and treatments are drawn, again by hand. I
use varying tools: brushes, steel pens, an array of
papers. These treatments, with the digital
designs, are assembled and sequenced, then care-
fully detailed, one by one, into illustrative and
thoroughly worked-out brandmarks. A venture
like this can involve a first phase of maybe 40 to
50 designs. Secondary and tertiary refinements
extend the reach to well over 100 explorations,
gathering speed and definition toward the fin-
ished selected design.
Film properties, like any identity program,
need design management. For many properties,
merchandising systems are prepared—in sim-
plistic or highly detailed form. Hanna Barbera’s
Johnny Quest had a comprehensive style guide to
manage all components of the brand expression.
Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow followed a similar
path. My first exposure to the film was looking at
miniature set renderings, reading the script, and
studying storyboard drawings. Ultimately, the
intention was to consider ways in which this
 Illustrating entertainment: A reflection

Design Management Journal Winter 2001 51

Designing Identity—Designing Brand
Many films or television properties cross over to complex merchandising
manuals like this launch-package style guide created for Johnny Quest.
An identity treatment for a film finds itself expressed in different ways.
The teaser title treatment for Sleepy Hollow, which was used as part of
a trailer, began to tell the story of the film.
classic tale could be repositioned, its identity
expressed in a new way. Multiple techniques were
involved in capturing these efforts in a graphic
forum. Sleepy Hollow was drawn with a steel-
tipped Spencerian pen on an Italian hand-made
paper. After numerous variations and explo-
rations, this “creepy” interpretation found its way
into the promotion of the film. The cracked
signature displayed itself on trailer titling, posters
(“Heads will roll!”), character packaging, shirts,
cups of soft drinks, and bags of popcorn.
Another component of identity management
for a motion picture is the “one sheet.” It’s the
predominant color print vehicle for motion
picture promotion—the poster you see in the
lobby of the theater, which lists credits for the
main actors, as well as the major participants in
the production and direction of the film. Each
character is measured to create an average height
that determines its proportional relationship to
the height of the stars’ names and the smaller
condensed credits indicated below. In designing
identity, therefore, it’s crucial that a sense of scale
and x-height (cap and lower case proportioning)
be considered in terms of the main actors, their
position in the film, and its marketing strategy.
52 Design Management Journal Winter 2001
Farther afield
My investigation into Hollywood led me to
other extensions into this entertainment
environment, from Academy Awards packaging
treatments to creating the identity program for
Planet Hollywood to film titling and animations
for film companies (Bel Air Entertainment,
Constellation Films, Mace Neufeld Films), the
invitation program for Sharon Stone’s wedding,
and the building of a Richard Gere Productions
Web site benefiting the Tibetan resistance
movement. All these issues attend to the
discipline of design management, but they reside
in a different and somewhat imaginary world—
Holly-world, as it were.
All in all, the fraction of work this represents,
compared with the rest of what our creative
organization does, is minimal. Yet the challenges
involved in designing and producing this type of
assignment are endlessly fascinating. To take the
complex storytelling vapor of a film and to wrap
it into such a minutely detailed expression of its
presence, which can be instantly read and under-
stood by millions of people, is an enthralling and
delightful challenge. It’s one I’ve explored in more
than 300 projects in the last couple of decades.
Like so much of the work of our brand develop-
ment concerns, it speaks to capturing the essence,
the Ch’i, the life force of our clients’ businesses
and—in the most powerful manner possible—
expressing this to the world marketplace. 
Photo credits: Girvin Inc. Reprint # 01121GIR46
Find related articles on www.dmi.org with these
keywords (see page 81): brand, graphic design, logos,
design strategy, design process
Tim Girvin’s work in the entertainment industry led
to such projects as the design of Sharon Stone’s
wedding invitation (right), an identity and titling
design sequence for Bel Air Films, and a Web site
for Richard Gere’s foundation supporting Tibetan
independence (above).