Project01.Precedent

Overview:
Over the past few decades, workflows within the design profession have become increasingly digital. Individual software applications replaced specific tasks like hand drafting. Now multiple integrated applications are employed from the outset of projects and allied professions are using the same or compatible applications. Digital workflows are no longer an alternative or improved way of operating, they are fundamental to practice and understanding them is a key to efficiency and collaboration.

Concurrently, the understanding of foundational design elements like texture, space and form are as vital as ever. Developing a workflow that cultivates an understanding of design elements while integrating contemporary digital applications is critical in your development as a designer.

Assignment:
Your assignment is to sketch one of the selected sites provided by the professor. You can use either graphite, charcoal or a similar media to create a monochromatic tone drawing that studies the qualities of light as it interacts with the surface of your object. Your sketch can focus on a portion or the entirety of the project, but must emphasize the contrast present in the design. For this reason, it is necessary for you to experience your site on a sunny day at the optimal time for your site. The sketch must be a minimum of 14”x18” and on a charcoal paper or similar. Your deliverable will be a digital scan of that image, saved as a jpeg at 300 resolution.

In conjunction with your sketch, you will be producing a measured drawing of your site. This will require both aerial and field measurements and crafted utilizing AutoCAD 2013. A .ctb file (pen settings) will be provided on the server and you are required to utilize these pen settings as you express hierarchy through your measured drawing. This drawing is expected to be both accurate and beautiful in presentation. Your deliverable will be both a pdf export as well as the .dwg file of this measured drawing with your name, title, geographic information, scale and necessary notes.

The final component of this project will require Photoshop adjustments to your image and integrating that image into the vector based program Adobe Illustrator. Within Adobe illustrator, you will integrate your measure linework and introduce annotations to marry both the analog and digital drawings into one cohesive image. Naturally, there will be juxtaposition between the temporal qualities expressed in the hand drawing against the technical measured drawing. Your emphasis however should express the harmony between the two drawings. This deliverable will be the Adobe illustrator file and an exported .pdf document at 11”x24” or another size approved by the professor. The file must be exported with appropriate compression and layer settings to retain the quality of the image while keep the file size below 20MB.

Deliverables:

  1. Scan JPEG image of sketch: lastname_firstname_sketch.jpeg
  2. Adobe PDF of Site Plan/Elevation: lastname_firstname_elevation.pdf
  3. AutoCAD Site Plan/Elevation: lastname_firstname_elevation.dwg
  4. Hybrid image Illustrator File: lastname_firstname_hybrid.ai
  5. Hybrid image JPEG: lastname_firstname_hybrid.jpeg

 

Resources:

Adobe Illustrator CS5 Noble Desktop Shortcuts – Mac

Adobe Illustrator CS5 Noble Desktop Shortcuts – PC