Tuesday 18,2014.
Ashraf khan.
The Cranbrook project spreads are starting to come together. I spent some time composing the section and floor plan spreads which meant moving away from the abstract diagrams and into more traditional architectural drawings. I also developed an interior rendering of the space in an attempt to better explain the ramp systems inside and what I was envisioning for colors/material. I decided to go bold with the colors since that seems to be the theme for this project.
Below are the spreads up to this point:
I am struggling with the last spread in relation to the others. It still seems a little foreign in my opinion and lacking the graphic language set up in the others. It could be the lack of the grided texture or simply the color tones of the page, or both. As I develop the final illustrations of exterior/interior shots, I may try inserting other graphics into this spread to see if they transition better.
This will have to be a short post this week since most of my time went into the actual making of these pages. However, I will see if I can find time to break down the interior image so check back soon.
THEATER UPDATE 2
SUNDAY, JULY 21, 2013 | ALEX HOGREFE
Progress is being made on the theater section of project portfolio upgrade. I put together some floor plans and sections/elevations of the design as well as compiled some of my past process work into another spread. I decided to group the plans, sections, and elevations into one spread because a) I want to leave more pages for process work and b) I like the visual relationship between the drawings. I typically don't render floor plans mainly because I prefer the clean, diagrammatic look of simple line drawings with poche walls. But, because I wanted to emphasize the geometric relationship of the plans ,sections and elevations, I therefore wanted to illustrate them similarly too.
I have been designing and developing the 3D model as I put together this portfolio and I therefore haven't had time to fully resolve all of the geometry. The 3D model was not in a place where I could cut a section and render the floor plans. Instead, I took the CAD floor plans that I had been developing along side the model and imported those into Sketchup and quickly extruded them. I now had something that I could throw into Kerkythea and render as seen below.
Above, A Sketchup model of just the first floor plan.
Above, A base rendering in Kerkythea of the first floor plan.
To finish everything off, I took a site plan rendering that I had made previously and blended it with the floor plan rendering to add a some texture and give some context of how certain walls relate to the exterior form. I also took the CAD floor plan and overlayed it on top of the illustration to get neatly poche walls and edges.
This project section of the portfolio is almost complete. I still want to add more site analysis diagrams along with some eye-level perspectives of what one would see when experiencing the different spaces of the design. The spreads are still lacking a sense of scale and place so I want to end with renderings that show people inhabiting the spaces, activities that will take place, and how this design blends with the site to generate a unique and exciting experience.
Below are the series of spreads developed so far for this specific project.
PROJECT PORTFOLIO UPGRADE: THEATER UPDATE
SUNDAY, JULY 7, 2013 | ALEX HOGREFE
The long weekend has given me a chance to catch up on some things, one of them being project portfolio upgrade. I have been spending time developing a new 3D model from scratch and it still is nowhere close to being completed. However, I wanted to get the page layouts started and I knew I had the shell of the design in a good place to begin the exterior illustrations. The good thing about this project is that I have a ton of process work to include with the design so less pressure is put on the final illustrations. Process work is always a good thing to include in portfolios and I plan to play it up for this particular project.
Below are the portfolio pages that I have started:
I'm a big fan of black and white images. I decided I would try to go all black and white for this project. Typically, I would not suggest jumping around with different styles in a portfolio to the extreme that I am. However, this portfolio is more experimental for me. It's a way to test out a lot of ideas that I have while at the same time hopefully providing some inspiration to others.
The site plan was fun to develop. One of the main goals was to get the building to morph with the ground in an interesting way. I wanted the illustration to have the effect of the ground pealing away around the built form. I went through a lot of trial and error before settling on style that seemed to work.
Since I went the black and white route, texture became more important than ever. Since I don't have color to distinguish material, texture became my only means of communicating all of the different surfaces. Ultimately, I think the design benefited from this way of thinking.
More portfolio pages to come so check back soon.
PORTFOLIO UPGRADE: GOING MINIMAL PART 2
SUNDAY, JUNE 2, 2013 | ALEX HOGREFE
A few weeks ago, I created a post on "GOING MINIMAL" and this week I am adding two more spreads to the project. I mentioned in the first post how difficult it is for me to leave white space on the page and I think the above two spreads show this discomfort through a denser layout than the first two. While I don't exactly have the white space concept figured out, it is forcing me to think differently about page layout. For example, I am giving the content more breathing room than I typically do. More space around the images means smaller images to account for this extra space. However, I think the clarity and readability of the pages make up for slightly smaller images.
It's rare to find an illustration on this site without some sort of grunge or sketch texture overlayed on top. However, with these latest spreads, less energy was put into textures and more into line weights and contrast. Since I am working to avoid using rendering engines for these spreads, getting floor plans, sections, and elevations to read clearly with depth means using line weights and SU shadows to my advantage. I like the look of thick profile lines that define the boundary of the imagery as well as the contrast created from sharp / dark shadows simply exported from Sketchup. These moves help to hide the "Sketchup look".
Finally, I took some screen shots of the grids I set up in each of the files. Simple, clean layouts will reveal the smallest misalignments. Setting up grid systems allowed me to place each object and text in a location that had a relationship to something else. While not everything landed perfectly on the grid, the grid did help me to give proper and equal spacing to the imagery, align column grids, and find patterns in the geometry that aren't instantly noticeable without the grid. The grid spacing was based on a few variables such as the number of images displayed on the pages, the "9 square cube" concept, and/or the rule of thirds.
I'm up to four spreads with this project. I still might put together a spread comprised of perspective vignettes similar to what is on the first page. It's going to take some experimenting to get the interior shots to display like I am imagining in my head. More on this later.
PORTFOLIO UPGRADE: PART 2
TUESDAY, APRIL 2, 2013 | ALEX HOGREFE
I put some more time into project portfolio upgrade continuing to develop the visitor center pages. The above sheets are a first pass at the layout and will serve as an introduction to the design and concept. Since the relationship to the landscape is such a crucial part of the design, I wanted the look to be bold and stand out in the opening pages. This meant desaturating the facing page and really playing up the color and texture of the site plan itself. Since the original project was designed so long ago, I had lost most of the information and therefore I had no idea where the exact location of the site was. All I had was an image of one of my old presentation boards. To get around this problem, I took snippets of satellite imagery and combined them together to create the final composition.
Above is the hand drawn site plan from the original project. I began by importing the image into AutoCAD and scaling it to the proper size. I then traced the topo lines and exported the line work as a PDF. This gave me a scaled base to work from in Photoshop.
I needed some textures and trees and the easiest way for me to find these was to take screen shots of satellite maps. In a matter of minutes, I had a good collection going. Above are the textures that I used in the final composition.
As mentioned above, I began with a PDF of the AutoCAD exported line work. I also used the rendered roof plan from the previous page for the visitor center building.
I next started to overlay field textures. The satellite images had lots of brown and red tones. I fixed this by adjusting the Hue and "colorizing" the images. I also inverted the topo lines to give them more contrast with the ground.
The roads came next.
Then came the trees. I spent very little time actually cutting them out. Since the trees are typically darker than the ground, I just set the layer blend mode to "darken". 
Finally, I did some color correcting and added shadows to play up the topography.
Below are where things stand at this point. I have three pages started which all still need some tweaking. I am planning two more spreads. One for diagrams and the other for interior/exterior illustrations. More on this later.
PROJECT PORTFOLIO UPGRADE
SUNDAY, MARCH 24, 2013 | ALEX HOGREFE
The last portfolio I created was in 2010 midway through my last year of grad school. It's been a long time and I have a lot more content now. You may have noticed that I have revisited many of my old projects and have continued to develop and illustrate them. Because of this, I now have new images not represented in any of my portfolios. I have some ideas for layouts and I want to spend the next several weeks putting together new portfolio pages. This will be an evolving portfolio moving in parrellel with my site as new illustrations are created.
The above pages are the beginning explorations and are still in the draft phase. Many of the individual illustrations vary in style so part of the challenge is getting them to read well with one another in the same spreads. I plan on adding two more spreads to this particular project which will include a new site plan, process work, and some interior renderings. It's probably important to note that this will be considered a post graduation portfolio and that I won't be trying to claim this as a project finished in undergrad even though it was started in under.
I have some goals with this new portfolio:
Clean: I want the pages to have more "white space" than I normally give. This means using more pages and less dense layouts. The idea is to focus on clarity of content not quantity of content.
Good flow: The information and graphics should transition into one another and be displayed in a logical order to better tell the story.
Range of styles and process work: I want this portfolio to have a range of styles to keep things fresh from project to project. Process work such as sketches and early diagrams are also key to giving this portfolio a human touch and revealing the design workflow.
Relational: I'm going to look for opportunities to combine diagrams and organize the pages so that images feed off of one another.
Explore color: My first portfolio was entirely black and white. My graduate portfolio was a complete 180 introducing much more color. With this next portfolio, I want to be bolder with the color selections and and use color to my advantage to get the pages to read clearer.
PAGE EXPLANATION
I see this spread as being the 2nd and 3rd pages of a total of 8 pages for this particular project. These pages document the most fundamental information of the project i.e. the plans and sections. I have laid out the sheets so that the rendered section is the focal point from which all other information is generated. I have located the plans and sections in such a way that I could graphically explain the cut locations with minimal linework. The plans are minimal, but I always prefer clean and simple floor plans and the contrast seems to work well with the corresponding dark sections page. I plan to add some more text calling out the room uses in both the plans and sections however I will keep the text light to avoid drawing too much attention.
In this spread, both of the above illustrations are graphically strong and it is easy to overcomplicate these pages. I therefore avoided adding anymore graphics or diagrams to either page and clearly designated an area at the top of the page for the body text. In an another attempt to simplify things and to relate the two diagrams to one another, I shared the callout labels. I think there is an oportunity to do more with the callouts but this will have to be explored another day.
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PAST PRESENTATION BOARDS: PART 3
MONDAY, MAY 28, 2012 | ALEX HOGREFE
This post is continuing off of the 4 boards discussed last week. To get up to speed on what I have already done so far, READ THIS FIRST. For the most part, I kept the overall layout of the original presentation, however, I have been tweaking certain elements and making adjustments in attempt to get the compositions to read clearer.
ARCHITECTURE PRESENTATION BOARD 3- RENDERINGS: The original rendering board had way too much information. I felt the layout worked, but there was some useless information that could be removed.
1. Imagery: Similar to board 1, the imagery on board 3 is too desaturated. At the time, I thought I was making the building stand out by desaturating the landscape. Over the years, however, I have spent less time trying to get my designs to stand out and more time playing up the site around the buildings in an effort to create a better relationship between the two.
2. Physical Model: There really isn't any reason to have images of the physical model that I built for the project on the presentation boards. I thought that including these images would give me brownie points for the competition. In reality, they are not adding any value to the story that I want these boards to tell.
With the new rendering board, the first thing that I focused on was adding color and life back into the illustrations. A lot of time was spent just adding color overlays and textures to the existing illustrations. I also focused on simplifying the boards. The main image now has lots of room to breath, while the four vignettes at the bottom are larger and have more of a presence in the board instead of just floating in space. There is an important detail of how the new museum design connects to the original Saarinen building, and I wanted to play this up. I therefore separated it from the other vignettes and again related its location to the elevations.
ARCHITECTURE PRESENTATION BOARD 4- DIAGRAMS: Not much changed with this board. I felt the layout worked well. The only thing that I thought needed adjusting was the size of the building roof plan illustration. I felt it competed too much with the board 1 site plan. As with the other boards, the illustrations at the bottom are too desaturated and for some reason I faded them out haha.
As you can see, the two are relatively similar. I shifted some things around so that the grid of the new board would relate to the grids of the other new boards. I also added some tone and textures to some of the illustrations.
THE FINAL COMPOSITION: With just some simple color corrections and minor compositional moves, I was able to make some dramatic changes to the feel of the competition boards. The original structure of the boards is still there, but this time I erred on the side of simplicity and clarity vs. quantity of information.
PAST PRESENTATION BOARDS: PART 2
SUNDAY, MAY 20, 2012 | ALEX HOGREFE
My last post discussed some architectural presentation boards that were, for the most part, poorly organized. I wanted to go into this week's post discussing some presentation boards that were almost up to par, but just needed some tweaking. I also noticed some comments asking me to revisit the boards, editing them based on my critiques which I thought was a good idea and therefore tried to do in this post.
To begin, this group of presentation boards was created in my final year of undergraduate school for a competition held by the Cranbrook Academy in 2007. The competition asked for four 20”x20” boards. For the amount of work that went into this project, cramming so much information into four boards turned out to be more difficult than I anticipated. On top of that, I have always found it challenging to organize graphics on a square format. The four boards were designed to read well by themselves, but also relate to one another when placed side-by-side. This was done by setting up a simple grid and creating relationships from board to board such as using the same size windows or overlapping background elements.
ARCHITECTURAL PRESENTATION BOARD 1- INTRO BOARD: The first board that I revisited was the top left layout with the large illustrated site plan. There are a couple of things that jump out at me right away.
1. First, the diagrams on the left feel like they are out of place and don't belong on the page. They seem like they were stuck there because I didn't know where else to put them. There are probably a few tricks I could do to set them better into the page, however, I feel that they just don't belong.
2. The main background image is too cold. I was in a phase back in the day where I avoided color at all costs. You can see this in my undergraduate portfolio where the whole thing is black and white. The problem with the mostly desaturated site plan is that it comes off as lifeless. While at the time, I saw it as being artistic, in reality, it's not projecting the design in a positive light.
3. The text gets lost in the background. I remember doing this because I was afraid of the text distracting too much from the large site plan image. But, because I faded it out and threw it on top of a busy part of the site plan, the text becomes very difficult to read and almost becomes more distracting to the overall composition.
Above: The original board Above: The new board
What I did to solve the issues mentioned above was to simplify things. Typically with the intro boards, I like them to be simple but powerful. The site plan I felt, could be a powerful image if tweaked. I pulled back the destaturation a little, and added a green overlay. This took all but 10 minutes but really made a big difference. I also moved the diagrams off of this page and onto a different board. This cleared up some space to move the text around. I darkened the black transparent box to help separate the text from the background, so that the two didn't compete. I also placed a scanned sketch just below the text as a way to end the paragraph.
ARCHITECTURAL PRESENTATION BOARD 2- DIAGRAMS & PLANS: I think this second original board has a decent layout. There is a lot of information on this layout, but much of it is difficult to read.
1. The floor plans are hard to understand. This was a tricky part of the layout because the floor plans themselves are an odd shape. Therefore, I had to fit them on the page the best I could without making them too small. There is also so much line work that it is hard to decipher what is inside, what is outside, what are ramps, what are corridors, etc.
2. Along with the floor plans, the section at the bottom is next to impossible to understand at a quick glance. Understanding the section is key to understanding the design of this project, therefore, the section must read better than it currently does.
3. The sketches on the left don't belong on this page. It's always important to integrate process work, but finding a place to include it can be challenging.
Above: The original board Above: The new board
The first thing you may notice is that the diagrams from the first board were switched with the sketches on the second board. This tells a more organized story of the project. Next, I faintly shaded the floor plans. As subtle of a move as this is, it makes a big difference on how fast one can read and understand the floor plans. Now, items such as inside vs. outside, openings in the floor, vertical circulation, etc. can be understood at a glance. Finally, I revisited the sections, and applied aTECHNIQUE POPULAR ON THIS SITE to add depth and clarity to the line work. While I like the simplicity of just the line work, adding a little shading goes a long way.
Be sure to check back next week. I will revisit the last two boards and discuss how to unclutter a overly busy layout as seen in the third rendering board.
PAST PRESENTATION BOARDS: FAIL
SUNDAY, MAY 6, 2012 | ALEX HOGREFE
Presentation boards are something I haven’t really talked about on this site and they seem like a good thing to transition into. I was looking through some of my old boards and couldn’t stop noticing really stupid mistakes that I kept making.
The below presentation was created in 2006, my junior year in undergrad. The design was an urban planning project and we were presenting our massing studies of an area in downtown Toledo, OH. At the time, I had only been using Photoshop for about a year, and this was probably the 3rd project that I had used Photoshop to create my boards with instead of drawing them by hand. With that said, I will use these boards to begin explaining what not to do.
BOARD 1: The first thing that really grinds my gears is that there are hardly any labels or explanations. For some reason, I felt it wasn’t necessary to write much. This is crucial because you won’t always be standing next to your boards to defend the design. Having short explanations give viewers a quick introduction into what you were thinking. It also allows the jurors to understand the parts of the project they are interested in while they are pretending to listen to you talk. I typically like to have a 3 to 4 sentence paragraph on the introduction board summarizing the overall concept and giving viewers a place to start. This board, however, has nothing.
While the large figure ground covering most of the sheet is an important diagram, it should not be the focus of the board. It might have helped to overlay an aerial image or combine multiple diagrams with the figure ground to amp up the message I was trying to get across. In this case, it seems I was more concerned about the composition of the board rather than the information I was trying to convey.
Board 2: The second board isn’t much better. Again, not much information explaining the images. My biggest beef with this board is the waste of space in the gray box on the right side. The images in the box graphically aren’t saying anything. This would be the perfect place for more diagrams or text explanations.
The image at the top left of the board should be removed. It is covering up part of the elevations and is representing a view that already appeared on the first board with the physical models, and will appear again in the next board.
The elevations read extremely flat. I remember spending a lot of time designing the project sectionally, yet I don’t have any drawings showing a section slice through the site. The sections would have provided a much better understanding of the forms and scale of the spaces compared to the elevations that just come off as confusing and hard to read.
Board 3: I remember getting really excited with how these night illustrations turned out. This was the first time I tried this technique, and it had come together better than I was expecting (SEE THE TUTORIAL ON HOW TO CREATE THESE ILLUSTRATIONS HERE). The big problem though is that all the rendered images are at bird’s eye view. Nothing is at eye level describing the experience of actually walking through the site. My thinking at the time was that I thought I could explain the building better with these types of views. But with this approach, I am essentially explaining the design as a sculpture and not as an inhabitable structure. I also show no people in or around the site, making everything feel lifeless. Adding people would have made a big difference in the atmosphere of these illustrations.
The repetition of views in these three boards are horrible. The pics I chose of the physical model are almost identical with the rendered views. While it seems obvious now, at the time, I didn't think twice about it.
While it is easy to look back at past presentations and pick them apart, it has also made me aware of the decisions I tend to make when I'm under a time crunch and has allowed me to work more efficiently the next time around. This is just one project of many so expect to see more critiques later on.
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