RUARAIDH HORTON | URBAN DESIGN REPRESENTATION | PORTFOLIO
Urban Design Representation Portfolio
MA Planning, MSc Urban Design 15th Jan 2016 Ruaraidh Horton 41 Athole Gardens Hillhead/Dowanhill Glasgow, G12 9BQ Tel. (0141) 339 1414 Mob. 077 3933 0247 Email: r.horton@hotmail.co.uk
2
R.H. | UDR | PORTFOLIO
Personal Details • Nationality
British
• Profession
Planning Graduate, Urban Design Student
• Education
MA Town & Regional Planning University of Dundee
Postgrad MSc Diploma Urban Design University of Strathclyde • Language Ability
English (fluent), French (competent)
• Technical Proficiency
Hand Illustrations Photoshop AutoCAD Illustrator SketchUP
3
R.H. | UDR | PORTFOLIO
Contents Personal Details
3
Background
5
Module 1 Photoshop Module 2 AutoCAD
6
8
Module 3 Illustrator
10
Module 4 SketchUP
12
Module 5 InDesign
16
Conclusion
18
4
R.H. | UDR | PORTFOLIO
Background My name is Ruaraidh Horton, I began my journey in Planning. After completion of the planning course in 2012, I spent some time working with PlanningAid Scotland. It was clear to me from an early point, that I felt I had more to give the built environment. Whilst I had already a keen interest in Urban Design and working with architects/community projects in the form of Charrettes, I decided to undertake an intensive Urban Design MSc course at the University of Strathclyde. My motivation in taking Urban Design Representation is one of interest. Whilst I am a keen sketcher, being able to visualise urban environments than would otherwise be created using the latest 3D visualization technology is of great importance in Urban Design Representation.
5
The benefits of being able to blend the old with the new in urban design is still there. There are many ways you can illustrate your work, the design process and the way you think in a variety of ways. Urban Design Representation has helped me to improve this visual communication between my ideas and how other people view my work. This is very important when working for an architectural firm/company and being able to communicate my work to peers/clients.
capability in design software programs whilst studying Urban Design Representation in 2015/2016.
Public Transport Density using Illustrator, Studio 1A
Presenting designs/ideas can help save money and identify future problems down the line. Traditionally, model making and hour-after-hour of drafting helped convey the image of the end product. With 3D visualisation technology, you can edit/adapt as you go along without having to start again. This portfolio illustrates my
Sketch: Entry to Springfield Court
Sketch: Raised lane Traffic intersection, Studio 1A
R.H. | UDR | PORTFOLIO
Description Photoshop is an image-editing software program. The most common type of photos are raster (pixel) based art work. You can create and edit images and designs to show anything you wish. From polishing to perfecting photos or creating something completely from scratch, it is a valuable tool in multiple professions including urban design. You can use Photoshop across a wide variety of media, from posters to illustrations and even videoediting. Evidence of activities Photoshop helped me to edit images or maps or any other form of media. I could take a photo on my phone/camera and then upload it, drag it into Photoshop and change anything I wanted. I particularly found the layer system very useful, quite
6
like tracing paper in digital mode. I could take a map from Digimap and then create a figure ground of my selected area which performs crucial analysis in realising positive and negative spaces. When I have created a SketchUP model for example, and I want to add trees and people to the image, I can do so on Photoshop. No matter what type of image it is, as long as it can be imported into Photoshop, I can crop, sharpen, alter…the list is endless. Photoshop software can really help you to form masterplans and effective points of view in a given plan. The variety of scales are very useful and has helped me to communicate ideas at micro and macro level when presenting projects to teachers and guest speakers at university. How it helps you as an urban designer It helps an urban designer by allowing them to edit environments,
buildings and features which otherwise wouldn’t be created. It can also create the vision through the eyes of the designer and therefore effectively communicate the end goal of his/her ideas and designs. Photoshop can help you display various dimensions and help you annotate the urban environment. Limitations and benefits of the program You can manipulate photos, plans in a variety of scales to show your vision. There is very little that Photoshop can’t do. However, to get the graphic just right in terms of perspectives and scale can be time-consuming. How they could be adapted/combined Photoshop is already a very compatible software program that you can save as a pdf or jpeg file. You then drag/open in other design software programs such as Illustrator and InDesign.
R.H. | UDR | PORTFOLIO
Photoshop: Home Excercise, Glasgow West End Plan Different layers illustrating the range of analysis that can be performed with Photoshop
GLASGOW WEST END
7
R.H. | UDR | PORTFOLIO
Description CAD stands for computer aided design/ drafting. It is a commercial software program that helps create blueprints for buildings and structures. It can be applied to 2D and 3D models. It is used by a multitude of professions including architects, engineers, graphic designers and project managers. Evidence of activities What you learned about the program I was lucky enough to have had a beginner’s course on AutoCAD prior to starting the urban design MSc so not everything was alien to me. It is an extremely precise tool and is particularly helpful when trying to annotate particular features of a project. For my history project, I found AutoCAD most useful when tracing building features of a late Georgian building design. How it helps you as an urban designer
aid construction or building structures. AutoCAD also has an amazing feature in 3D printing. SLA (Sterolithography) creates liquid resin layers that then solidify the object. The printing machine is becoming available to the public and all you need is input software from AutoCAD. Limitations and benefits of the program Communicates the technical ideas on a variety of scales. AutoCAD in terms of 2D and drafting, when compared to SketchUP, is a lot more sophisticated. How they could be adapted/combined with other programs to be more effective AutoCAD along with SketchUP can be easily read by Illustrator which are all working with vectors (graphics that use polygons to represent images). AutoCAD: Georgian Building Elevation
It helps architects and engineers understand projects with in-built design layouts to help
8
R.H. | UDR | PORTFOLIO
dining
living
kitchen
ldy guest bed garage ent media pch
AutoCAD: Home Exercise, Building Layout
9
R.H. | UDR | PORTFOLIO
Description Creates scalable vector artwork for use in projects for both printing and web. Illustrator is a useful tool to create clean, simple compositions that can be scaled instantly without losing resolution quality. It can also trace or re-colour freehand drawings/artwork/designs and illustrations. The program can also create wireframes for digital paintings. The program is used by both artists and graphic designers for posters, company logo’s or magazines, flyers and booklets. It is an effective publishing software program that can help brush up on models created from AutoCAD and SketchUP that maximise visually compelling urban design representational data. What you learned about the program Illustrator was a relatively new program to me. I felt that it was the instrument between the finished model and presenting that model in the overall representation process.
10
I first used Illustrator when analysing Glasgow’s transport network map. I could use the layers to trace various modes of transport all without losing quality resolution. In that way, the program layout is similar to Photoshop using layers to annotate the map. If you create an image in Photoshop but realised it should be four times bigger and then change the scale, it loses its resolution and often looks pixelated. Adobe Illustrator doesn’t work the same way, instead of raster images, Illustrator uses vector images which aren’t made up of a grid of pixels. Vector is created by paths with a combination of shapes, angles and lines which are related by mathematical formulas allowing them to be scaled and rescaled infinitely. How it helps you as an urban designer It is a flexible way to help you deploy your creative vision to any sketch, report or graphic presentation. It helps the profession by using almost cartoon-like graphics to make a presentation clear to its audience. This is particularly useful when designing a
logo for a company, or making a complex feature seem simple. Limitations and benefits of the program When dealing with large documents, InDesign tends to be a better program in terms of seting up master pages and automated page numbers. How they could be adapted/combined with other programs to be more effective Due to its relation to adobe office suites, it is already connected to InDesign for print production. It reads vector graphics very well which is why AutoCAD and SketchUP are commonly found in illustration presentations. Unlike Photoshop the drawings tend to look flat and so it is very challenging to render textures which are not smooth. Therefore, Illustration is more suited to 2D graphics unless the image is already rendered in 3D.
R.H. | UDR | PORTFOLIO
Illustrator: Playing with colours, Home Exercise and Class Exercise
Illustrator: Home Exercise, Road Hierarchy/Landmarks/Parks 11
R.H. | UDR | PORTFOLIO
SketchUP: Home Exercise, View of Athole Gardens Description SketchUP, formerly known as Google SketchUP is a 3D modelling software program. It can be used on a number of drawing applications used by architects, interior designers, engineers and film/video game design. I believe it is best used for visualising pedes-
12
trian point-of-view or axonometric views of futuristic model environments. It is a very simple to use, user-friendly digital sketch program that allows the user to draw models with additional inputs such as people/cars and trees from the online graphics 3D warehouse to make the environment seem more real.
What you learned about the program Photo Survey: Athole Gardens
R.H. | UDR | PORTFOLIO
SketchUP: Home Exercise
potential. SketchUP can work alongside basic outlines of designs and you can import/export models to Illustrator and Photoshop to create a more realistic effect.
13
How it helps you as an urban designer A creative tool that allows you to create environments from scratch. You can import models from the real built environment database or create something from an outline of plans for example. Limitations and benefits of the program
It is the easiest program I have had the pleasure of using when designing models of the built environment. When I have captured the right viewpoint of the design I can enhance the graphics with Photoshop to create an even more realistic effect. It is a very intuitive program and extremely user-friendly.
R.H. | UDR | PORTFOLIO
The layout of the toolbox makes it easy for any beginner to learn quickly. The program doesn’t possess HD graphics, its effective as a starting point for a design to illustrate simple shapes/features of the given area. How they could be adapted/combined with other programs to be more effective Once you export SketchUP files as dxf, it is readable on all Autodesk software. From there you can transport it to software programs such as Photoshop and Illustrator to create a more realistic effect.
Above: SketchUP Home Exercise Below: SketchUP Home Exercise
14
R.H. | UDR | PORTFOLIO
SketchUP: Different styles + views Above: SketchUP from Development Process Project 15
R.H. | UDR | PORTFOLIO
Description Desktop publishing software that helps to publish posters, booklets, flyers or brochures. It is really useful for rich typographic layouts, assembling photos and designs in an efficient manner. It can allow you to personalise the look and feel of the document. It allows you to convert ordinary documents into digital formats. It’s the final piece of software that allows you to create, assemble and output documents in a clear and coherent manner that best illustrates your work. Evidence of activities What you learned about the program I knew very little about InDesign when starting the MSc course but quickly realised how useful the program is. I can prepare all the text and images beforehand and then in InDesign, I can organise the layout to create the best possible illustration. The text wrap functionality is a particularly useful tool and is easier to use than Illus-
16
trator. The neat trick with InDesign is that it packages all your fonts and images unlike the layouts in Photoshop and Illustrator which create files that are needlessly oversized and can become a problem when printing. How it helps you as an urban designer It helps the profession of urban design by helping to display documents in a coherent fashion. When presenting a project’s findings in terms of analysis or strategy in the form of a booklet, it is most likely you would use InDesign to do so.
a project document.
Limitations and benefits of the program It maximises the organisation of the document, you can edit and reshape the images to fit around the text as you wish. You can highlight certain aspects and give the document its own flair. Its limitations include poor image-editing capability. How they could be adapted/combined with other programs to be more effective InDesign is publishing software, it is therefore the publishing product to representing
R.H. | UDR | PORTFOLIO
Source: http://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/36165/what-are-the-software-products-that-a-graphic-designer-can-workwith
17
R.H. | UDR | PORTFOLIO
Conclusion The role that these computer design programs play in representing ideas, projects and theories is critical. I hope to further my skills in illustrating Urban Design proposals in a clear, convincing and attractive manner in order to achieve high quality representations. Photoshop: Photoshop is one of the most commonly used programs and is incredibly useful to communicate ideas and visualise future environments. Any image can be altered/edited in a variety of ways which makes the possibilities endless. From a beginner’s point of view, some of the functions are quite complex and it takes time to learn them like most of the other software. AutoCAD: One day, I will have to produce 2D drafts or features of a project for the client using AutoCAD. I like the input commands and hotkey features which speed up the process when tracing dimensions/outlines of a given subject.
wider audience such as the general public at a charrette event. It is a useful tool to enlarge graphics from the size of a logo to billboards. SketchUP: I will continue to use SketchUP in the future to quickly produce 3D environment representations. It is more userfriendly than AutoCAD and once exported can produce very realistic graphics. InDesign: There is no question that I will use InDesign to lay out Urban Design Representation which involves blocks of text and photos into a document such as newsletters, booklet or book etc. Its main purpose is to take elements created in Photoshop and Illustrator and put them together in the one place.
Illustrator: I would use Illustrator to perfect a poster, booklet or pamphlet that makes it simple to understand when appealing to a
18
R.H. | UDR | PORTFOLIO
(Source: http://www.printwand.com/blog/when-to-use-adobe-illustrator-vsphotoshop-vs-indesign )
19
R.H. | UDR | PORTFOLIO
20
R.H. | UDR | PORTFOLIO