Paper Rules!

An encouraging finding: among 4,000 designers surveyed world-wide, most of them - 64% - still use plain ol' paper and pen or pencil to brainstorm.

Doesn't surprise me at all.

One designer remarked on the particular usefulness of this old-tech method in a meeting.  

Exactly!  Nothing is as fast, as flexible, as readily available as scribbling on paper.  You can respond immediately to the flow of thought in a meeting - or while solo brainstorming.  There is less temptation to perfect the drawing (and computers do prefer perfect); instead the impulse on an impromptu scrap of paper is to rough out something messy but expressive. 

The this-ain't-nothin' worthlessness of a quick sketch on a cocktail napkin is part of its value - it stops the rough idea from becoming too precious to change or discard.

Sketch by Clare Floyd DeVries - do not use commercially please.

The ability to create fast hand sketches is so useful that I once

got flown to Tennessee just to show design grad students how.

Now, the old style of formal hand-drawn drafting or presentation drawings... those easily(ish) translate into computer hardware and software use.

More on the survey HERE at Wired.com.

Sixty Years of Architectural Drafting

How things have changed!  Watch this great video Holiday Card from Omniplan.

http://vimeo.com/81682539

A picture of my own, circa 1970 drafting compass set - gifted to Public Domain

End of an Architectural Era

One architect I know, who started out in the 1980s at the very end of the era of hand-drafting, just yesterday cleared out his office desk drawer: home went the drafting lead holders, the lead pointer, the French curves, the circle and bathroom fixture templates, and all the triangles but one.

He hadn't used them in the last fifteen years.

He needed the drawer space.

Computer drafting is a cool invention with a lot of capabilities that can't be matched by drawing on paper, especially as 3D systems like Revit become the newest standard, but it is nostalgically sad to see the retirement of a hand skill that has existed more or less unchanged since Imhotep sketched up the world's first pyramid.

The architect/doctor/god Imhotep, public domain photo courtesy of Wikipedia

For those Readers in the DFW area, the Kimbell Art Museum has an even more beautiful statue of an almost-as-ancient architect/god, Senmut.  Worth a visit.

Personally, I think it's cool that my profession has actual, official gods.  I mean, shouldn't every job?  Or at least a patron saint, as St. Clare is for television.  (She was sick in bed and had to miss Mass, but saw visions... like wifi TV evangelism, but without the technology.)  But who is the patron saint or god of theater set design?  I'm going to have to mull over that...

Drafting Day

I understand that in Charles and Ray Eames' drafting studio no radio was allowed.  They thought it would distract their draftsmen from the task at hand.

Now, I, myself, find drafting kinda dull and the time passes so slooowly...

Crank up the radio!

Public domain image - Wikipedia

For more on drafting, see my Set Design Process page HERE.

Life Interrupts Set Design

Sorry about the few-N-far-between posts here lately.  There's been a family medical emergency, so I'm in remote mode and rather... distracted.

Nevertheless set design has been going on in a start and stop kinda way.  I completed all the construction drawings for my black & white show The Frequency of Death in a motel room and I'm working on sketches for The Diary of Anne Frank in a guest room.

One professional trick I've learned over the years has come in very handy now: have a "traveling" design and drawing kit!

In my case the traveling kit is a mini drafting board with a parallel bar (I like to work on 8 1/2" x 11"* sheets), plus drafting pencils, pens, colored pencils, mini drafting triangles and scale all fitted into a very small black leather case.   The drafting board isn't mandatory but, frankly, I've done all the drawings I ever want to on sticky kitchen tables or - horrors! - tile counter tops.

You never think you're going to need design much while on out of town... but sometimes you do.  I've had to create colored renderings in beach-side rental houses, designed shows in motels, and especially re-designed elements of a show in restaurants, coffee shops, and on the phone in the car.  Changes strike anywhere!  And the designer must be prepared.  So, when it became obvious that I'd be here longer and need to do more drawing than first thought, I supplemented this mini-kit with real-sized triangles, my handy electric eraser, and a few other things.  But the expanded kit still fits in a smallish cardboard box.

For those who draft on the computer, the Kit could fit in a laptop... but you'd better practice a bit at using your drafting program on that teeny tiny screen.  I don't think a smart phone is going to work.

Give it some thought...  How would you get your projects finished if you had to leave town in an hour?

* Make that 11"x17" sheets!  (Told you I was distracted.)

Set Designer's Life - Drafting

It's weird, but after only thirty years...  I'm kinda bored with drafting.

If I can get started, I'm okay.  Force myself to my board and get involved with the design...  Because there's always more design!  You figure out details: how to build this?  What would be the cheapest or most straightforward assembly of materials?  What's critical to visual effect or use and what isn't?  In architecture,  materials and connections have to be substantial, but theater lasts five weeks - which allows a little cheating.  Make that joint Gaf tape!  (Love Gaf tape.)  I rather love the ability to cheat; sometimes it's easier to get the look you want working with cardboard and Gaf, than with granite and stainless steel.

There's no end to design.  After construction drawings are done you talk with the builder, who has a better idea.  Together you develop a third - even better - way.  You scribble details in your sketchbook or on scrap plywood.  Think slow and thorough at your board - then fast and collaboratively at the build site.

I've been busy at my drafting board, working on The Fantasticks for Circle Theatre.

A simple plan, yet mine own... or...  No, actually it's a redesign of Ed Wittstein's original scenic ideas for the first production of The Fantasticks, in Greenwich Village.  This is the longest running  show ever in the U. S. at 42 years.  Here's an amazing Wikipedia quote:

"The producers spent $900 on the set and $541 on costumes, at a time when major Broadway shows would cost $250,000. The original set designer, costumer, prop master, and lighting designer was Ed Wittstein, who performed all four jobs for a total of only $480 plus $24.48 a week."

Amazing?  For two reasons:  Wittstein's  ideas are still perfect for the show (I don't use "perfect" lightly); and both set budget and  designer's pay haven't changed much in forty years.  Circle's budget for both is bigger (thank goodness!), but I'd bet every designer in the DFW area (or elsewhere) has had less to spend and has been paid less on some show or other.  

Be honest.

Okay - I did the math.  According to one estimate, $ 1.00 in 1960 would equal $ 7.46 in 2011 dollars. So...  Wittstein had the equivalent of a present day $ 6714 to spend on his set and was paid (ignore the weekly) $ 4036 as a base fee... for, count 'em, four jobs... so let's say $ 1000-1200 for wearing the set designer hat.

Times haven't changed at all!  In fact, set budgets may have declined, while pay is... still pathetic.  Ouch.

Set Designer's Life - Changes

Nice to think that as a designer you could sit at your board (drafting board: archaic technology for the hand drafting of construction documents on paper)...

Where was I?  Ahem.  ...sit at your board, dreaming up design ideas to be realized in the real world exactly as you imagine.

Wake up!  It'll never happen.

Sometimes, as I found with my recent photo mural problem, there will be a technical glitch that makes your idea impossible.  Sometimes it will be budget or logistics.  Sometimes someone else has an idea to improve yours.  There will always be changes between what you first envision and what ultimately gets built.

And this is okay.  Designs can grow stronger as they travel from your board to the stage.

In the photo to hand-painted mural change forced upon this particular design of mine...  Well, it went from Not-Working to Working which, I suppose, has to be considered "stronger."  My actual painting, though not as lovely as I'd wish, seems effective.  So I hope!  Let me know what you think.

Becky's New Car opens Saturday.

Archaic Technologies

My college had architectural drawings for some of its oldest buildings - drawn in ink with a ruling pen on linen.  When I started in architecture, construction drawings were hand drafted using lead on a 100% rag paper called vellum.  Shortly after - briefly - it was ink on Mylar, a frosted clear plastic.  Now computer drafting is back to ink, but on bond paper.

Reproducing drawings was, in olden days, a matter of tracing by hand onto translucent paper.  (In the late 1960s a school kid had to trace illustrations for a report - no copiers yet.)  Blueprints came, then blue-lines, then sepias and black-line prints... all Diazo prints made with chemically treated papers rolled through a printer that fumigated them with ammonia.  (Boy! did it smell and did a papercut ever sting!)  In the Mylar days, some drawings were made on multiple layers and assembled with pin-bars (to hold them registered with each other), then printed on a flat-bed printer.  The intern who printed these got to throw their body on the flat-bed to try to keep it flat and keep air bubbles out.  Now the computer's ink-jet plotter makes as many copies as you like.  

What comes next?

public domain image of an architect at his drafting board