I also generated a before and after semi-photoreal illustration of the site plan. Again, because I had modeled most of the geometry, generating these illustrations didn’t take too long. Plus, I like the visual contrast of the abstract diagrams next to the realistic illustrations of the site. Google Earth was used to create many of the textures such as the rubber roofs of the existing context buildings and to age the ground paving and vegetation a bit.

For maximum flexibility, I rendered with both soft and sharp shadows. Sometimes, especially with diagrams, shadows can be distracting and impact clarity so I wanted to have both options ready to go.

Before and After Illustrations

The MIT project that I designed is a large intervention on the campus and I thought a before-and-after series of images would help illustrate this idea. As I mentioned above, I extracted a ton of textures from Google Earth screenshots to more accurately depict rooftops and other misc. textures.

Graphic Iterations

Once the before-and-after illustrations were completed, I switched modes and started experimenting. Above all else, I wanted to study color combinations and texture levels as well as test out styles that ranged from minimalist to full on texture and complexity. My Photoshop file had lots of groups and masks setup so that I could adjust colors and textures rapidly. Again, this took a little more time upfront to setup, however, it allowed for super clean edits that didn’t get messy and confusing after hours of playing around. More importantly, it allowed me to really fine tune and dial in things because I had full control of every color and texture. Below are some of the images that were generated from this exercise.

Crops

1. Base Rendering Cleanup

A simple V-Ray clay rendering was generated from the Sketchup model. I then cleaned up that rendering in Photoshop by adding a white poché to the section cut as well as people for scale

2. Smudge

Adding “Smudges” is an easy way to break up the perfect gradients of the base rendering. Here, I am just painting in some black paint using a soft brush at a very low opacity. I am focusing the the smudges at corners and where shadows are collecting. You will also notice that there are moments where I masked the smudges for sharp edges to create an ambient occlusion effect to play up certain geometry planes. Finally, I added some tone to the sky to better define the horizon and actual section cut.

3. Micro Textures

I wanted to further break up the perfect gradients of the clay model rendering, so I added textures to specific moments around the image. These textures added a hint more detail when zoomed in close to the image.

4. Macro Textures

A texture was applied across the entire image. Since the textures in the last step were meant for a closeup view, the texture used here is meant to read from a distance and won’t be that perceivable up close. The effect is subtle, but helps further breakup the smooth gradients in the sky and over the entire image in general.

5. Noise

I’m in a “Noise” phase at the moment where I seem to be adding noise to every image I create. I like how it breaks up the super sharp edges of a rendering and adds a bit of abstraction. In the case of this image, I applied two layers of noise. The first layer had a larger scale so that it would read at a macro scale. The second layer of noise had a much finer grain to it and was meant to read better when zoomed in close to the image. Both layers had a lowered opacity so that they somewhat blended together.

6. Color

Finally, I added a hint of color to the image and darkened everything slightly. This section cut illustration with the desaturated tones and layers of texture is one of my favorite style of images to work on. From a technical standpoint they are easy to create. Even though it has an old school feel to it, the image still works well as a diagram and clearly conveys some complex information. I am planning to follow this up with an aerial axon illustration soon.

The site is located right on Massachusetts Ave. and sits between Harvard Square and Davis Square. The station serves several transportation systems; Red Line subway, the Commuter Rail Fitchburg Line, and multiple bus routes.

One of the most interesting parts of Porter Square Station is how deep the Red Line Subway sits below ground level. Users have to travel 105 ft. (32 m) on two large sets of escalators to reach the platform. In order for me to really start thinking through the design, I built a model of the existing site so that I could see how the different systems overlap each other and put together these diagrams to help explain.

The station that is currently there was redesigned in 1984 by Cambridge Seven Associates, a well respected architecture office here in Boston. Given what I am sure were tight and constraining parameters such as cost and strict code and MBTA guidelines, the station design still had very interesting and aggressive geometric moves. One of the advantages for me when setting up these imaginary projects on my site is that I get to ignore some of these constraints as I explore the formal and spacial ideas in my head and see what illustrations are generated. I will be designing the new station over the couple of weeks, so stay tuned.

If you read my first post, you understand that Alex and I chose to start his Portfolio design process by selecting fonts. Anytime I begin any kind of design project I always start with type. Others may tell you they start with a grid, color palette, forms, and shapes, but for me, it all begins with type. Whether I’m starting a large scale environmental design project or visual identity and logo, I always start with type. That’s because type allows me to determine what kind of visual voice to give a project. For me finding that voice is the foundation for any visual design endeavor.

01. Precedents

The first step in determining what kind of font to use is to look at your project and see what other projects are out there that have the same qualities as yours. See what they’re doing and make a determination whether or not you want that same look or feel, or whether you want to be completely different. A great resource I use is Fonts In Use. This resource allows you to see real-world applications of who’s using what fonts and how they’re being applied.
Fonts In Use is also a great resource to discover new typefaces to add to your now ever-expanding library.

Another great resource for conducting precedent research is Typewolf. Just like with Fonts in Use, Typewolf posts contemporary projects from around the web and highlights the typeface’s featured in each project. The feature that I enjoy the most from Typewolf is their guides and resources section. Although you have to pay for some of them, they are some of the most help type guides on the internet.

Finally, the most helpful resource for me, believe it or not, is Pinterest. It’s honestly a great resource for zeroing in on specific project typologies that might be harder to find on a google image search. It, of course, makes it easier to develop a mood board to really determine how you see your project shaping up.

02. Terminology

Let’s talk about some basic terminology.

Serif vs San Serif

Simply put, a serif is a font that has a small line/stroke that finishes off a larger stroke. A sans serif is a font that doesn’t have any of those small strokes or serifs.

Tracking

Tracking or letter-spacing is the uniform spacing between all the letters and characters in a given word or sentence. Tracking often gets confused with kerning, which is the individual spacing between two letters or characters. Be careful when designing to not track your letters too closely or too far apart. This can lead to major legibility issues.

Leading

Leading or line spacing is the distance between two lines of type. It’s very important to pay attention to the leading when you start to deal with type in uppercase vs sentence case. When your type is in uppercase you can start to adjust your leading to be a lot tighter because your not dealing with varying heights within the typeface. However, when dealing with sentence case be careful that your type doesn’t get too close or too far apart. When lines of type start to collide it can make it very tough for your eye to follow along.

03. Do’s and Don’ts

Let me just mention these are just suggestions, there’s no wrong or right answer here. These are just some simple do’s and don’ts that can help guide you when you’re putting together your own spreads and portfolios.

Do Keep It Simple

The best piece of advice I can offer is to keep it simple. When putting together a spread try to keep your use of different typefaces to a minimum. I would suggest using 1-3 typefaces max on a spread. If you can, just use one typeface that has a number of different weights. This way your spread will feel more cohesive. Using too many typefaces can become chaotic quickly, especially when you start to factor in your imagery and color usage.

Do Stay Consistent Throughout The Document

Another tip is to determine different weights and sizes early in your design and then replicate that throughout your other spreads. Start with one spread. Figure out what the most important information is. Maybe it’s a heading or some kind of call out making reference to an image. Give it the biggest presence on the page whether that’s size or weight. Secondly, determine your secondary information. Is it a subheading or is it body copy? Give that a substantial size difference from your primary information. Lastly, if you have captions or any type of tertiary text make sure to make it the smallest size on the page so that it doesn’t start to compete with the rest of the spread.

Do Not Stack Vertically

In general here are some things I would stay away from when you start putting a project together. Stacking text vertically. Seriously, don’t do it.  It’s always tough to read especially in a book format. You’re asking the reader to put in more work to understand what it is your trying to convey.

Do Not Use Script Typefaces

Definitely stay away from script and handwritten typefaces unless a project really calls for them. If the project does call for it write it out yourself and scan it in. Typically these kinds of typefaces come across as forced and inauthentic. When in many cases your use of script text is meant to come across with a high sense of authenticity.

04. Other Resources

Type Foundries

In our previous post, we spent a lot of time talking about free font resources like Google Fonts and Adobe Fonts. This time around I wanted to highlight some of my favorite type foundries that produce really great typefaces. I would suggest checking out the following;  Grilli Type, Commercial Type, Klim Type Foundry, Colophon Foundry, Dalton Maag and Village. These are the type foundries I go back to time and time again.

Print Publications

There are of course really good print publications on typography as well. I would recommend Design School: Type: A Practical Guide for Students and Designers, Thinking with Type and Type on Screen. Lastly, if you’re really looking to nerd out on typefaces I would suggest taking a look at The Visual History of Type, and Basic Typography: Design With Letters.

1. V-Ray Base Rendering

For the V-Ray base rendering, I simply applied some colors close to what I was looking for knowing that I would tweak them later in Photoshop.

The Material ID that rendered out of V-Ray was crucial for me to make fast selections. Each color represents a zone that will take on a very specific color in Photoshop. I have talked about Material ID in more depth in this POST.

2. Add Color

Next, I took each zone of color and created a mask of that specific area in Photoshop so that I could dial in the color. In the image above, I adjusted the center pink zone to be lighter and more saturated. I wasn’t trying to be realistic so I wasn’t concerned about washing out the shadows a little bit.

Above, the image shows what the illustration looked like once I had all of the colors adjusted in each zone.

3. Texture

I added a simple plaster texture to all of the walls to break up some of the smoothness of the color gradients. I wanted to do this in Photoshop so that I could dial in how strong the texture was. It is important to note that I still distorted the perspective of the plaster texture to match the wall angles. If it sounds like a lot of work, it isn’t because I was able to use the color zone masks used in the previous step to speed this process up.

4. Color Adjust and Noise

At this point, I began adjusting the overall image. I first lightened the images and increased the saturation. I also added just a hint of noise. I describe how to add noise in step six of this POST.

5. HDR

Finally, I added a slight HDR effect that amplifies the contrast and textures. I used Topaz to generate the HDR effect.

Final Images

1. Camera Distance

As I mentioned above, one of the goals of these images was to reveal the vastness of the surrounding site. I did this two ways. First, I pulled back the camera so that the architecture only made up a small portion of the image. Going through school, I was always afraid to make my design so small in the image because there was always a sense that I needed to show as much detail as possible in the architecture. Making the building so small within the image meant a lot of the detail was getting lost. However, now I realize that this move is in many ways advantageous. Since the detail is abstracted, it forces the viewer to focus on other elements such as the profile of the architecture or in this case, the landscape around it. I also played up the vastness of the site by letting the sky and ground textures do a lot of talking in the images by using some dramatic cloud formations and strong directional elements like the tire ruts in the ground.

2. Composition

I kept things pretty simple and safe with the composition. Again, I wanted to play up the landscape, so I kept the horizon at the lower 1/3 of the images so that the sky would take up more real estate. I eye-balled a lot of these camera setups, so there are several near-misses in terms of where geometry and focal points are landing on the 1/3 marks of the image (corner of the the building in view 02 and placement of the woman in view 01).

3. Color

With the location being in the desert, it is easy for the scenes to get somewhat monotonous, so I gave each scene a primary color to start with. In each case, I used dust and dirt in the air to reinforce the arid climate atmosphere with the night scene getting a little more clear and cold feeling. As I mentioned above, there wasn’t a lot of time needed in Photoshop adding in texture and detail which meant I was able to spend more time experimenting with color.

4. Final Images

I had a lot of fun making these images. I would say all of these images hit my sweat spot in terms of balance between time spent modeling, Photoshopping in detail and texture, and experimenting with color and atmosphere. In terms of difficulty, these were actually quite easy. I am thinking one of these may be a good candidate to break down further into more detailed explanations of each step of the process. Stay tuned.