Life has been busy lately. However, I have managed to squeeze in a little time to create two new spreads. I have moved to a different project in the portfolio and I wanted to change up the style a little. Much of this portfolio so far has been very graphically intense meaning I rendered or post processed every image on the page. It's very hard for me to accept any "white space". This way of thinking comes from the fact that I am trying to fit as much information into as few pages as possible. The problem then becomes how to manage the hierarchy and avoid having the graphics all compete against one another.

One way to solve this is by taking the "less is more" route. Thinking minimally is outside my comfort zone but at the same time I find minimalist graphic design beautiful and refreshing. The difficulty comes from having to choose what to present and what not to present. If there is white space left on the page, I instantly start thinking what can I fit in there. For some reason, I have this fear that if there isn't a lot on the page then it may appear like not much effort or time was put into the design. On the other hand, presenting minimal graphics successfully could show a certain comfort in the design and clearly drive home the concept.

With that said, I also wanted to explore putting some spreads together that didn't require any rendering time and minimal Photoshop time. This site has many tutorials that look at abstract illustrations (such as this and this) yet there is very little on using these types of illustrations in portfolios or presentation boards. More than anything, I wanted to see if I could get these pages to be as informative and expressive as some of my other project pages.

With the introductory page, I started out with a bold image. You may recognize this image since it was pulled from this post, with the colors desaturated. The only color comes from the highlighted text which also spills over into the next spread. The graphic itself has nice lines and draws the viewer in without giving away too much.

The most important part of this project was how the form was developed. This meant giving up a lot of space for simple line drawings and not over thinking how to graphically explain this idea. These first few pages have set the tone for the rest of the project pages and the goal is not to stray too far off course. It's a good exercise to get myself to think differently about page layout and I'm interested to see what comes out of it.  

Last week I briefly posted some images that I had developed for the "rendering" spread of this particular project. I didn't post the spread itself which is shown above. I thought I would spend this week breaking down how I got to this point. In other words, the process of deciding views, composition, etc.

As simple as the spread may seem, a lot of trial and error went into the design as with all of the spreads seen so far. It's all about developing many iterations before finalizing the design. I rarely have everything come together on my first try. More importantly, I often don't accept the first outcome without also experimenting with several other ideas. I do this iterative analysis because it encourages creativity. I tend to jump to past solutions first when designing, but forcing myself to look at multiple other solutions requires me to think more outside of the box. 

Architecture illustrations are time consuming so I wanted to be careful not to render something that I ultimately wouldn't use in the final composition. I therefore started by putting together a selection of potential views that I thought told the story well. 

Above, a selection of interior views exported from my Sketchup model

Above, a selection of exterior views exported from Sketchup

With the views selected, I began testing out different layouts. There were a couple of key factors that influenced the layout design:

1. Hierarchy: What images are the most important and how do I get the viewer to look at those first?

2. Page Coverage: How much white space, if any, do I want to have?

3. Contrast: Do the images compete too much with one another or do they enhance one another?

4. Readability: Is it easy to understand the images?

5. Relationship to other pages: How well will this spread relate to the other spreads of this project?

6. Text: Is there room for text and if so, how will it work with the composition?

7. Number of spreads: Do I need more than one spread to get my point across properly?

I went back and forth multiple times trying to decide whether or not to use more than two pages for the illustrations. Ultimately, I went with a single two page spread which has a denser feel but I think works best with the rest of the pages. I am not a big fan of portfolios with too many pages so I often defaut to designs with the minimum amount that best tells the story. I also went with all full bleed images with minimal separation between them which saturates the pages with color.

Since I had a clear plan for the layout, I knew exactly what images I needed to spend time rendering. Knowing what images were going to be next to one another also meant that I could post process more effectively ensuring that images used similar color tones and lighting. 

The final result is a spread that has a lot of information, but does it in a controlled manner through the use of a simple grid layout. I'm curious what the consensus is out there as to which layout you think would have worked the best. More white space? Four pages instead of two? I even considered doing a daytime spread and a corresponding night time spread.

Below is the progress of all of the spreads up to this point:

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.

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. 

A few weeks back I posted an x-ray illustration of one of my old projects as sort of a last minute idea. This was the first time I had ever done an "x-ray" illustration and I immediately became excited about the possibilities. I'm really drawn to this style because of the way it reveals scale, tectonics, and the relationship of inside to outside. The thing is, this style is really easy to replicate assuming the 3D model is built correctly. I have a habit of thoroughly grouping parts of my 3D models so that I am able to move large chunks out of the way for easier modeling and editing. Because of the way the model is grouped, I am also able to selectively "peel" away parts of the building facade when it comes to rendering the final design. Below is a break down of the illustration as well as a few tips for combining the images.

Above, the Sketchup model with the roof being removed.

The first step involves rendering the model multiple times. I did three separate renderings with the first one showing the complete model, the second with the roof off, and the third with some walls removed. I rendered the model without materials because there was already so much geometry being overlayed on top of each other. I was afraid adding materials would start to over complicate things and muddy the reading of the illustration.

Rendering 1: Model as is (Kerkythea).

Rendering 2: Roof removed (Kerkythea).

Rendering 3: Walls and some floors removed (Kerkythea).

Ultimately, I didn't use the 3rd rendering because some of the lower floors were not fully modeled and much of the information was repetitive with the second rendering.

With all three renderings completed, I began layering them in Photoshop. I started with rendering 1 and used that as the base image. I then took rendering 2 with no roof and moved it above rendering 1 in the layers pallet and set the blend mode to "Multiply".  I added a layer mask to rendering 2 and began selectively erasing areas that I didn't want showing through.

It's important to maintain the clarity of the exterior form. Throughout post processing, I'm constantly pulling back and looking at the whole image to make sure the exterior form still reads well and isn't getting lost within the interior layers. One way to manage this relationship is by focusing on the corners and edges of the exterior. With the layer mask still active, I selected the areas I wanted to define, and began erasing parts of the interior (rendering 2 layer).

By giving the exterior corners and edges of the design more definition, the dual reading of exterior and interior is much easier to understand.

The last few steps involve me spending time adding textures and background elements to liven up the surrounding site. I tend to default to minimal materials when the complexity of an image such as this is so extreme. More materials in my opinion would make it more difficult to understand the forms. Instead, I focus more on texture to differentiate between built form, hardscape and landscape.

Finally, I tweaked the color/ levels and gave the image an HDR effect.

I spent most of the day designing and developing the above model that I didn't leave much room to do an illustration or even a post. However, this is what several hours got me. I've done a few illustrations with this model in the past looking at different ways to portray the relationship between the structure and spaces within the design. My first attempts were with a section and an exploded axon illustration. Something I haven't tried yet is a rendered x-ray shot. This is my first "test" illustration with this style and I see a lot of potential for this idea to create some graphically interesting and informative illustrations.

The work flow is pretty straight forward. I rendered the model three times, each time removing layers of the model to expose the spaces inside. I then took all three renderings and overlayed them on top of each other in Photoshop. Using layer masks, I tweaked the transparencies to get certain spaces to read stronger than others.

Below, the three renderings used to compose the final illustration.

Since I didn't have much time to put this together, the way the designed is peeled away isn't as elegant as it could have been. There is still a lot of information not shown such as the stairs with the cylinders and the structure within the floors. Either way, I like the complexity that the illustration achieved in such a short amount of time. I'm interested to see what kinds of results I can get with some of my other models.

Not everyone has the capabilities to render huge models with a ton of lights. I am one of those people where more times than not I have to manually add light to my illustrations because I don't have the computing power. At first, this method can seem tedious. But, when you think about the time that it takes to insert lights into a model and then the time that it takes to render so many lights, knowing how to do this in Photoshop can be a great resource to have as a backup. There is a typical workflow I use that consistently yields clean, realistic results without much effort. I am using the urban snow scene that I posted a few months back as the base case for this tutorial. The model was large, and there were way too many windows to try to render. The steps I used to Photoshop the light are outlined below.

1. SAVE THE REFLECTIONS - For scenes like the one above, I rendered the glass of the surrounding buildings with a strong reflection. This allows me to copy the reflections to their own layer and use them later on as an overlay. To copy them to their own layer, select the "polygonal tool", then select the glass of the windows you intend to light. Right-click on the selection and choose "Layer via Copy".

2. PAINT IN THE BASE LIGHT - Next, I created a new layer called "glass light". Again, I selected the glass part of the window. To speed things up, you can ctrl+click the reflections layer in the previous step instead of using the polygonal tool to reselect all of the glass. With the glass selected, choose the "Brush" tool, select a soft yellow paint color, select a "Soft Round" brush, and lower the opacity of the brush to around 15%. Begin painting color with most of the light at the bottom of the window fading away as you move towards the top of the window.

3. HIGHLIGHTS - This is one of those steps that is easy to forget or to treat as not important. In reality, it is the most crucial step in creating successful lighting. Without it, the light looks flat. Begin by creating a new layer and setting the blend mode to "Overlay". Select only the surfaces facing the window that would be hit by the light coming through the glass. A good way to determine this is by looking for surfaces that are 90 degrees to the glass. With the selections made, choose the "Brush" tool, select a soft yellow paint, select a "Soft Round" brush, and set the opacity to around 35%.  Begin painting in the highlights. If the highlights seem weak, you can amplify the results by duplicating the highlight layer.

4. SOFT LIGHT GLOW - Another subtle, but important step. Create a new layer and choose an off white paint color. Choose the "Paint" tool, select a "Soft Round" brush, and set the opacity really low to something like 12% to 15%. Begin painting around the window edges being careful not to overdo it. 

5. BRING BACK THE REFLECTIONS - The last step is to retrieve the reflections layer created in the first step. Bring that layer to the top of the layers pallet, and set the blend mode to "Screen". This will amplify the reflections since they were most likely diluted from the painting in the previous steps.

BEFORE

AFTER

I came across the concept of "quilling" a few weeks back and instantly began thinking how could I translate this digitally to generate a unique architectural illustration for marketing or portfolio purposes. The style had a great look to it and I knew that Sketchup had some plugins that could make the workflow really simple. All you need is Sketchup Pro so that you can export and import AutoCAD files, and the "TIG" plugin called "Extrude edges by Vector".

1. The first step is to export a view of the sketchup model as 2D AutoCAD line work. As I mentioned above, you need Sketchup Pro to be able to export  AutoCAD files. In Sketchup, choose "File>Export>2d Graphic". In the export dialogue box, set the export type to "AutoCAD DWG" and then export.

2. Next, start a new Sketchup model and import the AutoCAD file that was just exported in the previous step. Choose "File>Import". In the Import dialogue box, browse to the location of the AutoCAD file making sure that the file type is set to "AutoCAD Files". Then import the file.

3. Once the geometry is imported, the next step is to extrude it vertically. Sketchup does not extrude lines, therefore a plugin is needed. There are many out there, but the TIG Extrude Edges by Vector seems to work really well. This plugin allows you to select many edges that are not connected and extrude them in any direction. 

Once the plugin is applied, the result is a series of planes resembling strips of paper.

4. The last step is to set the view to "Top" and render the model. I then tweaked the colors in Photoshop and added some light textures to achieve the final look. 

1. SITE GALLERY - I have created and posted many images since 2009, however there has never been an easy way to view them without searching through a ton of old blog posts. Therefore, I set up a gallery that lays them all out on a single page. If the thumnbnails are clicked, a link is revealed under the image that takes you directly to the corresponding post. This provides a different and hopefully easier way of experiencing the site.

2. USER GALLERY - I consistently have visitors sending me their illustrations, process work, and diagrams. It only made sense to embrace the large and growing community forming around this blog and start a page that aggregates illustrations from around the world. I think there is an opportunity to build a unique gallery that focuses on experimentation, different work-flows, and stuff that has never been seen before. Although there were a few directions I could have taken this, I ultimately decided on a Tumblr site to handle this traffic. I love the simplicity of these sites with their clean interface and beautiful galleries. Note that I have already added some of my own images to get the ball rolling. These will be removed later on. I will also be moderating the submissions so it may take some time before images are uploaded to gallery. You can submit an illustration by going to the Tumblr page and selecting "Submit an Illustration" at the top.

3. TWITTER - I have been putting this off for way too long. Although I am late to the game, I have finally set up a twitter account to offer up another way to keep tabs on this blog. With the kind of numbers this site is getting, it is becoming next to impossible to respond to all of the comments and emails that I recieve on a daily basis. At the same time, I want to try to remain as accessable to all social media platforms as I can. Its a delicate balance of creating content and responding to emails/comments and I'm not sure that I have it figured out yet.

So with that said, I hope to keep growing this site and build on the community that is already here. If you have time, post some architectural illustrations to the new user gallery, get some great exposure, and be sure to follow me on twitter.