Louis Kahn, the people that hang out on TC do so because we like to. Everyone is welcome on TC, not just old timers (and I'm using old timers to mean "have been on Archinect for years" not old people - though at 44 I'm both).
It's the water cooler of Archinect. Take a break and check in here whenever you feel like it - that goes for everyone on Archinect!
i know, we are all young really. except for me i guess. I was speaking more about experienced archinectors rather than old age. I feel relaxed here, away from the portfolio crits and M.Arch threads.
more like the crazy water cooler where you get professors, students, interns, principals, soccer moms, goat herders, circus freaks, and the occasional penguin. and, then there's rusty.
I think it's about time I solicit the collective wisdom of Thread Central for opinions on a sign I am working on (small pro bono project).
I am torn between just 2 options - very easy design crit, I promise - and I would LOVE your thoughts. I've put together a flickr set that gives you some context images as well as the two options themselves.
If you would like to give your thoughts - and please do! - first start here:
Uhoh, I tried to edit but it disappeared. I like the blurriness between what is photograph and what is drawn in the teaser image. And I like the overall design very much - modern but appropriate for the history of the church, and good serious weight. I prefer the fancy R.
Once I get a couple more opinions from TC folks I'll share what my concerns are.
btw - that drawing isn't from a photo overlay - it's an amalgam of a lot of photo collaging in photoshop. I loooooove collaging & usually use it for color/texture mock-ups like these (also for concept drawings). So - the lines are from the drafted file - and I pasted in bits of lots of different photos to fill in the rest. For example - the bricks are created from many overlapping pastes of a small section (maybe 3'x3') of a photograph of the brick facade. I can no longer remember if I created the shadows myself or not. They may have been convenient artifacts in the source images.
Once you do this a few times it gets to be really fast and easy. I love photoshop!
The only thing I don't like is that the brown sign doesn't have a noticeable border. It feels like the Ravenswood sign is gobbling up the top part of the other sign. On the other hand, the Ravenswood part seems to accommodate the shape of the brown sign.
Yeah, what are they tasting in there, witches brew?
I had a hard time reading the R at all for a while. That could simply be image size, computer issues, but I kept reading it as evanwood. Must just be my mind.
Can't see so well on my phone. R is hard to read for me too. But am down with birds.
We are up in in tohoku today for o-Bon festival. This is the festival for remembering the dead. It's a strange mix of sadness and joy in this case because they want to celebrate life and survival at same time. Last night a few hundred candles were floated onto the harbor in paper lanterns forming a long procession out to sea. Before that there were fireworks watched from what I imagine were the same high spots that the fold here ran to when they escaped the tsunami. Probably best not to think too much on it.
This afternoon our students will be building an arch out of fish looking pieces of wood. Should be interesting.
Hi all. I'm leaving for Cuba tomorrow to begin my thesis research. I'll be MIA for the next 5 weeks or so. I am overly excited and nervous to begin my thesis. I suppose that's a good thing when I've committed the next year of my life to one topic, eh?
n_ good luck and don't be scared. Cuba's overrun with Canadians and Germans and the British and pretty much everyone but the Americans. You'll have a blast there! Hopefully you even get work done.
ps. don't fall in love with a Cuban boy/gal. It'll doom ya!
now my curiosity is piqued donna, but i will have to wait until this evening to view.
going to see a dermatologist to get some things checked out. but only cause a friend recently had some pre-cancerous things removed. now my SO is been bothering me to get my moles etc checked out..
jump and sarah, I wasn't sure if your problem was being able to see the sign clearly, or was more of a design comment, so just in case I've uploaded a clearer picture of the final design:
SW - yes I am worried about legibility. Thanks for your comments.
JJR - I have read your comment a few times and I'm not sure I follow what you mean?
Thank you all for your feedback, this is very very helpful. Hoping Erin, David, *melt, toaster can comment? I'm sure Orhan and Barry are too busy.
I don't have any opinion on which R is better (slightly prefer a larger R, but not necessary the typeface), but that plaque for the church hours feels a little too tight up against the upper sign - if it read as two forms I think the whole sign might feel a little stronger. I wonder what would happen if you right-justified the text...
Really, the visor? I'm just glad he remembered his shoes! I do wonder, now that you mention it, if the pink visor was intentionally chosen for it's colour. It does coordinate nicely with the rest of him.
-- I probably should have noted that letters will be engraved into limestone via CNC. The "R" will have varying depths of engraving in order to help distinguish the pattern.
-- Toaster - well of course, you always have insightful things to say. I am struggling to understand your comment though. It what read as two forms? Also, which text would you try right-justifying?
The plaque will sit off the face of the concrete base about 1" on (invisible) stand-offs. It's designed to be removable - we have "regular hours" and "summer hours" at this church, so there will be a plaque with each.
-- As for the SW, SH, nam, et all comments... hmm. In fact, my worry over the design is that there is too little continuity between the "R" design and the "regular" font of the rest of the words, leading the eye to have difficulty reading it all as one word... I didn't want to voice that concern before, to see if anyone would feel that way independently. Is that the issue that you guys are describing, or is it something else?
btw, the concrete base of the sign has been built already. Maybe I should post a pic. You can never have too much eye-candy, right? Another decision I'm facing is what kind of stain and/or textural finish to give the base... with gray concrete for the base it will probably look too similar to the gray limestone going in on top. Ah, design!
myriam - in elevation it appears there are two L shaped forms - the white (limestone?) one with the "ravenwood" and the taupe one (stained concrete?) that has the plaque on it. moving the plaque down so that you see some taupe above it could possibly help the bottom L-shaped form read a little better. I think your instincts in trying to make the "R" a little bolder/different is maybe you making up for some weakness/timidness in the overall composition. just something to think about. It's a question I always ask myself whenever I feel like I'm doing too much messing around with fonts.
I'm wondering what right-justifying "evangelical covenant church" would look like. it could look horrible... I don't know.
Curiously enough, the original design for the plaque is as you say - and in fact it made the two forms read too strongly separated. It placed too much hierarchical emphasis on the vertical portion of the bottom "L" and made the whole sign ensemble read as three shapes - the top L, then a vertical bar and then the bottom horizontal leg. Not good. Bringing the plaque up really helped tie the whole composition together better - it was honestly a slam dunk move. As soon as I did it, I loved it. Also it really calls to mind the banners that hang from the alter / communion table. Hard to explain this reference unless you are a churchy type.
I know what you mean about messing with fonts though... as you can imagine, my entire design was originally much more ambitious (involved an actual abstract-tree-like design, "sheltering" the church name - a reference to a verse in which the church is likened to a sheltering tree which provides a home for birds. "Ravenswood" is actually the name of our neighborhood so it made for a great reference.
BUT as is the nature of design-by-committee - especially on pro bono projects in which the architect, to some extent, lacks agency through lacking fees -- the "tree" design was deemed too strange and I had to work hard to put some fun into this much more basic design. It's amazing how sometimes you end up doing MORE drawings / mock-ups for these little non-profit jobs than you ever do with commercial clients!
So I may in fact be reacting by trying to "inject" some "fun" where it doesn't belong (ie, in the font). This is why I am serious need of serious design criticism.
For background reference - I took the "R" from our printed bulletins and to my great surprise I discovered the pastor had created the "R" himself via photoshop! I didn't even know he HAD photoshop. It was a proud moment for me as a snooty designer church member, ha ha. The birds and leaves images are pulled from a Catholic designer who makes these awesome wood-cut liturgical images, and he overlaid / manipulated them onto a gothic-font "R" he had.
So there's some theological & cultural basis for using the "R" - it is connected to our church and our neighborhood - it's not purely coming from a desire for a less bland sign.
Although truly the reason I am torn is that I feel like the "R" might not be quite right (can't tell why) but the version without it looks too bland and boring to me - "classic" and "elegant" but also kind of just like every developer's special engraved limestone out there. It litters our city btw - I was pulling for S.S. letters on standoffs (same price!!) but I had to give up that battle, it wasn't worth the fight.
a reference to a verse in which the church is likened to a sheltering tree which provides a home for birds.
oh! make the sign into a birdhouse!! examples - use a regular R - put in a hole and a small metal dowel- or do a birdhouse at the smaller end. looks normal but also fun and meaningful. Could be used as part of children's sermons....
precedents are bee hives built into medieval cathedrals.
i like the "fancy" R, and never had a problem reading it as a single word... it might read better as a word of the spacing between the letters was tightened up just a tad...
also, am i reading the images correctly... is there a cross-shaped void in the base that the main plane of the sign (the one with ravenswood) slots into? if so, i like that detail... perhaps that could be the birdhouse...
if i read another article that includes the sentence, "more than half the world's people now live in cities," or some variation of that, i think i'm gonna snap... the tipping point was 4-5 years ago already... let's stop acting like it is a new phenomenon...
Hah. Sorry Philip. Guilty on two or three counts. In defense I did stop awhile back.
I like fancy r better than normal one but it also feels a bit out of place. Not sure why and no thoughts beyond that. I don't have the knowledge to say much of anything about fonts. Seems such an impenetrable art to me.
Workshop went well. I am very impressed by the students and the people here. Amazing resilience.
I would say keep the Fancy R....just relief it in a box....then people will think about it for like a nano second longer. The information about times.....needs to be dropped and tightened up a bit.....but who the heck am I to say. Just an over the hill old fart according to some of our local visitors.
On the nicest day of summer I was watching my framing contractor lifting 8x12x 25' beams into place for a Trellis. We did have a hick up with pier locations so a fix had to be made on the fly. It all worked out in the end but as you know....it is an extra.
Snook, you just click the picture icon next to the little 'globe in chains' icon, just above the typing box. Then paste in the picture url. Nothing to remember now!
good day today... was on a summer studio review at upenn this morning with fellow archinector AP... then had lunch with AP, his better half MK, and other friends... then spent this evening working out some ideas for a mountain house... followed by hanging out with some neighbors on the stoop/sidewalk whilst drinking some bourbon/ginger ales on a beautifully mild summer night in philadelphia...
Thread Central
oh and donna i responded over on the downgraded thread to your question re: the super-committee.
Not that I am the authoritative source :o
Louis Kahn, the people that hang out on TC do so because we like to. Everyone is welcome on TC, not just old timers (and I'm using old timers to mean "have been on Archinect for years" not old people - though at 44 I'm both).
It's the water cooler of Archinect. Take a break and check in here whenever you feel like it - that goes for everyone on Archinect!
i know, we are all young really. except for me i guess. I was speaking more about experienced archinectors rather than old age. I feel relaxed here, away from the portfolio crits and M.Arch threads.
water cooler of archinect, i like that
So my last TC comment gets downgraded to FF-. Again.
Donna, all are welcome to TC, but some more then others.
more like the crazy water cooler where you get professors, students, interns, principals, soccer moms, goat herders, circus freaks, and the occasional penguin. and, then there's rusty.
rusty is cool, he makes me laugh a lot
aww you guys are best! I like to practice my material here for my upcoming phd (doctor of design) dissertation.
it's doctor "by design"
toast wins today's internets.
Here. You win spare parts of Archinect's glued-together server. We don't know what they are for.
Unbunch your panties rusty, your comment wasn't showing up due to bug related to some changes we're making to the comment forms.
Ah, Finally!
I volunteer to unbunch rusty's panties. That's good training for my alternate career when I finally give up on architecture.
And I agree that toaster wins the internet for the day. LOL, toaster!
Hi everyone!
Long time no see!
I think it's about time I solicit the collective wisdom of Thread Central for opinions on a sign I am working on (small pro bono project).
I am torn between just 2 options - very easy design crit, I promise - and I would LOVE your thoughts. I've put together a flickr set that gives you some context images as well as the two options themselves.
If you would like to give your thoughts - and please do! - first start here:
check out the church, on its corner, in google street view here.
Then please head here to look at the two options.
Teaser image...
THANK YOU ALL!!!
That teaser image is lovely - I love the weird real/drawn blurry.
I prefer the fancy R.
Uhoh, I tried to edit but it disappeared. I like the blurriness between what is photograph and what is drawn in the teaser image. And I like the overall design very much - modern but appropriate for the history of the church, and good serious weight. I prefer the fancy R.
awesome, thanks, Donna.
Once I get a couple more opinions from TC folks I'll share what my concerns are.
btw - that drawing isn't from a photo overlay - it's an amalgam of a lot of photo collaging in photoshop. I loooooove collaging & usually use it for color/texture mock-ups like these (also for concept drawings). So - the lines are from the drafted file - and I pasted in bits of lots of different photos to fill in the rest. For example - the bricks are created from many overlapping pastes of a small section (maybe 3'x3') of a photograph of the brick facade. I can no longer remember if I created the shadows myself or not. They may have been convenient artifacts in the source images.
Once you do this a few times it gets to be really fast and easy. I love photoshop!
The only thing I don't like is that the brown sign doesn't have a noticeable border. It feels like the Ravenswood sign is gobbling up the top part of the other sign. On the other hand, the Ravenswood part seems to accommodate the shape of the brown sign.
It seems mildly confusing to me.
Donna, your panty unbunching service is just in time for tomorrow's 'Commando Fridays'!
myriam, put a bird on it!
rusty, look closely at the "R". :-)
Also, I can't wait for the new season of Portlandia! previews look awesome.
Oh cool. There's a bird in there already. Make it look more evil though. Like this:
Yeah, what are they tasting in there, witches brew?
I had a hard time reading the R at all for a while. That could simply be image size, computer issues, but I kept reading it as evanwood. Must just be my mind.
Can't see so well on my phone. R is hard to read for me too. But am down with birds. We are up in in tohoku today for o-Bon festival. This is the festival for remembering the dead. It's a strange mix of sadness and joy in this case because they want to celebrate life and survival at same time. Last night a few hundred candles were floated onto the harbor in paper lanterns forming a long procession out to sea. Before that there were fireworks watched from what I imagine were the same high spots that the fold here ran to when they escaped the tsunami. Probably best not to think too much on it. This afternoon our students will be building an arch out of fish looking pieces of wood. Should be interesting.
Hi all. I'm leaving for Cuba tomorrow to begin my thesis research. I'll be MIA for the next 5 weeks or so. I am overly excited and nervous to begin my thesis. I suppose that's a good thing when I've committed the next year of my life to one topic, eh?
Enjoy the rest of your summer, TCers!
Safe travels and learn tons, n_!
n_ good luck and don't be scared. Cuba's overrun with Canadians and Germans and the British and pretty much everyone but the Americans. You'll have a blast there! Hopefully you even get work done.
ps. don't fall in love with a Cuban boy/gal. It'll doom ya!
i'm for the un-fancy 'r', myriam. easier read. and the fancy 'r' - except for the raven - seems irrelevant in the context of the rest of the sign.
N, do check in from time to time, I'd love to know what its like there.
Jump, that sounds amazing. My life is so boring.
And finally, I came across this on pinterest. Just wonder what y'alls immediate reaction is to it. I nearly laughed out loud. Warning: Possibly NSFW
*Possibly* NSFW?! Ha! But live and let live, ya know? I find the pink visor the funniest part of the entire ensemble.
now my curiosity is piqued donna, but i will have to wait until this evening to view.
going to see a dermatologist to get some things checked out. but only cause a friend recently had some pre-cancerous things removed. now my SO is been bothering me to get my moles etc checked out..
I think i am going to the beach this weekend
TGIF and morning all!!!
jump and sarah, I wasn't sure if your problem was being able to see the sign clearly, or was more of a design comment, so just in case I've uploaded a clearer picture of the final design:
SW - yes I am worried about legibility. Thanks for your comments.
JJR - I have read your comment a few times and I'm not sure I follow what you mean?
Thank you all for your feedback, this is very very helpful. Hoping Erin, David, *melt, toaster can comment? I'm sure Orhan and Barry are too busy.
also myriam even i agree with Steven "i'm for the un-fancy 'r', myriam. easier read." seems to caligraphic currently.
I don't have any opinion on which R is better (slightly prefer a larger R, but not necessary the typeface), but that plaque for the church hours feels a little too tight up against the upper sign - if it read as two forms I think the whole sign might feel a little stronger. I wonder what would happen if you right-justified the text...
also - I'm honored that you would want me to crit your work.
Really, the visor? I'm just glad he remembered his shoes! I do wonder, now that you mention it, if the pink visor was intentionally chosen for it's colour. It does coordinate nicely with the rest of him.
-- I probably should have noted that letters will be engraved into limestone via CNC. The "R" will have varying depths of engraving in order to help distinguish the pattern.
-- Toaster - well of course, you always have insightful things to say. I am struggling to understand your comment though. It what read as two forms? Also, which text would you try right-justifying?
The plaque will sit off the face of the concrete base about 1" on (invisible) stand-offs. It's designed to be removable - we have "regular hours" and "summer hours" at this church, so there will be a plaque with each.
-- As for the SW, SH, nam, et all comments... hmm. In fact, my worry over the design is that there is too little continuity between the "R" design and the "regular" font of the rest of the words, leading the eye to have difficulty reading it all as one word... I didn't want to voice that concern before, to see if anyone would feel that way independently. Is that the issue that you guys are describing, or is it something else?
(Paging Erin...)
btw, the concrete base of the sign has been built already. Maybe I should post a pic. You can never have too much eye-candy, right? Another decision I'm facing is what kind of stain and/or textural finish to give the base... with gray concrete for the base it will probably look too similar to the gray limestone going in on top. Ah, design!
myriam - in elevation it appears there are two L shaped forms - the white (limestone?) one with the "ravenwood" and the taupe one (stained concrete?) that has the plaque on it. moving the plaque down so that you see some taupe above it could possibly help the bottom L-shaped form read a little better. I think your instincts in trying to make the "R" a little bolder/different is maybe you making up for some weakness/timidness in the overall composition. just something to think about. It's a question I always ask myself whenever I feel like I'm doing too much messing around with fonts.
I'm wondering what right-justifying "evangelical covenant church" would look like. it could look horrible... I don't know.
It looks bad - I already tried it.
Curiously enough, the original design for the plaque is as you say - and in fact it made the two forms read too strongly separated. It placed too much hierarchical emphasis on the vertical portion of the bottom "L" and made the whole sign ensemble read as three shapes - the top L, then a vertical bar and then the bottom horizontal leg. Not good. Bringing the plaque up really helped tie the whole composition together better - it was honestly a slam dunk move. As soon as I did it, I loved it. Also it really calls to mind the banners that hang from the alter / communion table. Hard to explain this reference unless you are a churchy type.
I know what you mean about messing with fonts though... as you can imagine, my entire design was originally much more ambitious (involved an actual abstract-tree-like design, "sheltering" the church name - a reference to a verse in which the church is likened to a sheltering tree which provides a home for birds. "Ravenswood" is actually the name of our neighborhood so it made for a great reference.
BUT as is the nature of design-by-committee - especially on pro bono projects in which the architect, to some extent, lacks agency through lacking fees -- the "tree" design was deemed too strange and I had to work hard to put some fun into this much more basic design. It's amazing how sometimes you end up doing MORE drawings / mock-ups for these little non-profit jobs than you ever do with commercial clients!
So I may in fact be reacting by trying to "inject" some "fun" where it doesn't belong (ie, in the font). This is why I am serious need of serious design criticism.
For background reference - I took the "R" from our printed bulletins and to my great surprise I discovered the pastor had created the "R" himself via photoshop! I didn't even know he HAD photoshop. It was a proud moment for me as a snooty designer church member, ha ha. The birds and leaves images are pulled from a Catholic designer who makes these awesome wood-cut liturgical images, and he overlaid / manipulated them onto a gothic-font "R" he had.
So there's some theological & cultural basis for using the "R" - it is connected to our church and our neighborhood - it's not purely coming from a desire for a less bland sign.
Although truly the reason I am torn is that I feel like the "R" might not be quite right (can't tell why) but the version without it looks too bland and boring to me - "classic" and "elegant" but also kind of just like every developer's special engraved limestone out there. It litters our city btw - I was pulling for S.S. letters on standoffs (same price!!) but I had to give up that battle, it wasn't worth the fight.
a reference to a verse in which the church is likened to a sheltering tree which provides a home for birds.
oh! make the sign into a birdhouse!! examples - use a regular R - put in a hole and a small metal dowel- or do a birdhouse at the smaller end. looks normal but also fun and meaningful. Could be used as part of children's sermons....
precedents are bee hives built into medieval cathedrals.
i like the "fancy" R, and never had a problem reading it as a single word... it might read better as a word of the spacing between the letters was tightened up just a tad...
also, am i reading the images correctly... is there a cross-shaped void in the base that the main plane of the sign (the one with ravenswood) slots into? if so, i like that detail... perhaps that could be the birdhouse...
/begin rant/
if i read another article that includes the sentence, "more than half the world's people now live in cities," or some variation of that, i think i'm gonna snap... the tipping point was 4-5 years ago already... let's stop acting like it is a new phenomenon...
/end rant/
Hah. Sorry Philip. Guilty on two or three counts. In defense I did stop awhile back. I like fancy r better than normal one but it also feels a bit out of place. Not sure why and no thoughts beyond that. I don't have the knowledge to say much of anything about fonts. Seems such an impenetrable art to me. Workshop went well. I am very impressed by the students and the people here. Amazing resilience.
I would say keep the Fancy R....just relief it in a box....then people will think about it for like a nano second longer. The information about times.....needs to be dropped and tightened up a bit.....but who the heck am I to say. Just an over the hill old fart according to some of our local visitors.
On the nicest day of summer I was watching my framing contractor lifting 8x12x 25' beams into place for a Trellis. We did have a hick up with pier locations so a fix had to be made on the fly. It all worked out in the end but as you know....it is an extra.
I would post a picture but....well they took away the instructions at the bottom of the page.
Paul could you bring them back for us old farts who can't recall what they had for breakfast.
That or could someone give me a lesson...
Snook, you just click the picture icon next to the little 'globe in chains' icon, just above the typing box. Then paste in the picture url. Nothing to remember now!
good day today... was on a summer studio review at upenn this morning with fellow archinector AP... then had lunch with AP, his better half MK, and other friends... then spent this evening working out some ideas for a mountain house... followed by hanging out with some neighbors on the stoop/sidewalk whilst drinking some bourbon/ginger ales on a beautifully mild summer night in philadelphia...
What is AP doing in Philly, did I miss that?
I'm on the pursuit of happiness and I know everything that shine ain't always gonna be gold
I'll be fine once I get it, I'll be good.
@donna, he's now back in NYC and took the bus down for the review...
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