8 hour design study.

I'm still testing out ideas for designing and building my own home, using primarily shipping containers, with various sites that are currently available. This design study took about 8 hours.

Conceptually, it's a 1,920 sf (exterior dimensions) house with an accessory dwelling unit, in this case, a home office / production studio, with its own parking spot, as mandated by the jurisdiction this is located in. I'm always interested in creating spaces, so there is a low -- 3' tall -- partial retaining wall that helps isolate the space from the busy street traffic, and an elevated deck that ties in the ADU and main living area.

It's not a complete design, obviously, so I've left out a lot of fussy details. It's more of a massing and layout design.

View from East

View from Southwest

Plan View

South Elevation

North Elevation

East Elevation

West Elevation

Inserted into Google Street View, looking from Northeast

Officially official: Portfolio site now live.

Well, I've finally completed it, though the journey was an odd twist.

I was originally going to build my portfolio from scratch using Adobe Muse, and in fact some three years ago or so, I had a template front page figured out.  But then Muse left beta and became a paid app, so that left me hanging in the wind.

I then started working with a jQuery template, but it really was just an image template which therefore required hard coding for the overall layout of the site.

At that point I was going to build it in Google Web Designer, but then I realized that I didn't have the time to build it from scratch.

So I decided I might grab one of those free templates, and I found a really good one that was minimalist and all.  But then after fudging around with it, I realized that it would still take quite a lot of time, first to read through the documentation, then adjusting all of the parameters by hand.

So finally, I decided to go to Wix.  Of course, I started the project, and then let it sit for a couple of months.  But last week I finally got off my bum and worked at it, and in four days I've finally completed it.

My portfolio website.

Now granted, it's currently hosted at Wix and has ads for Wix, because I'm not going to pay $5 / month at this point to host with my domain name that I own.  Eventually that'll change, I'm sure, but for now, it's good enough.

The obligatory screen shot of my portfolio.

Kuwait competition -- another project reworked.

Here's another blast from the past project that I worked on.  Some 12 years ago, this was built in 3D in AutoCad, then rendered via 3DS Max.  I'm still working on fixing the model up after importing it into Sketchup (there is a lot of work to be done!), but it's definitely going to be worth it.

I didn't do the design; I gave my input on the design to the head designer, though, and it reflects a lot of my personal style.

Here's a peek into where it stands right now.  When it's all done, I'll show the updated model.

Blast from the past: Wash. County Museum

I've been going through past projects, converting some 3D CAD files to Sketchup files, and putting in some extra work into adding flourishes, rerendering them and adding some extra stuff with Photoshop.  Back in the day, I relied on AutoCAD's built-in Max, and before then, the stand-alone Max to render.  Things are a lot easier and better now.

Here's one project that got the once-over treatment: Washington County Museum.  

When I first started working on this, it had been modestly designed.  In fact, it was ugly.

The project was never completed in the way it was intended because of a lack of fundraising to cover the total cost of the work, so the highlight of the project was axed.  Had they waited to start the work until they'd gotten enough funding, it would have had a spectacular entrance area and retail sales space, giving the museum a leg up for future growth.

Oh well.

Designing houses.

Something I'd love to do, is design houses.  Something I love doing right now, is finding properties online, grabbing their contours from Google Earth via Sketchup Pro, then modelling ideas.

This one, just completed.  After modelling, I exported and rendered it, then added some flourishes via Photoshop.  Took all of about 4 hours.  Obviously designing for a client with a program takes a lot longer, and this is just a facade exercise.

It also serves as a break from doing the stuff that I'm supposed to be doing, namely, re-building the ol portfolio and getting it sent out to the printer.

On the boards: 8-20-2013

Maybe I need to change that phrase, seeing as I don't actually use a drawing board, except as a table top for my laptop?  Anyway, current project on the board: radio station.  Here's the central server room that holds all of their content.

Using a ribbon analogy in design.

Working hard at a design right now, and am currently focused on an analogy of ribbons for directional flow: 3D ribbons, flat surface ribbons, and ribbon panels.

New design work.

Another retail project -- a snapshot computer rendering of one of the furniture pieces.

It's all coming together now...just another month or so.

I hope the correct the curvature kinks out, though...it's not supposed to be a pointy football, but a nice elliptical track.

Healthcare packaging - an actual magazine.

I was googling for some direction for a graphic design project on drug packaging, and stumbled across this: Healthcare Packaging website and magazine.  Turns out - and I've known this for some time - you'll find a lot of trade publications available online for free.  No doubt, it's the advertising that fund these babies.

Quick list:

Building Design and Construction has a free digital edition, that can also be downloaded as a PDF;
Concrete Construction has access to articles online, but not a downloadable PDF;
Metal Architecture has downloadable PDFs;
Boutique Design has viewable/downloadable PDFs;
Eco-Structure has viewable/downloadable PDFs of their issues and articles online;
EcoHome has archived issues in viewable/downloadable PDFs, and current issue articles online.

Update on retail design.

Finalized exterior, currently working on interior, including some customized furniture (built-ins and light pendants).

Sketchy view of interior, from furthest inside point of retail space.

Retail preliminary designs.

Based on a couple of different ideas. All preliminary, at the moment.

An explanation about Kurokaeru, and what "No Design Limits" means.

No Design Limits means that there are no boundaries of what can be designed: graphics, furniture, architecture, interiors.  Here's a sample of work that is outside of the graphic design work currently being targeted for building up Kurokaeru's Cafe Press store -- real and unrealized and simply conceptual design studies from over the years, from recent (top) to older (bottom).

There is no reason to stay within the boundaries of design professions, since many of the same principles apply, including form, color, spatial layout, thematic identity, and of course, a personally fostered style.  Whimsical folly is a major theme.