[week.08]

The focus this week has been on the pre bid meeting for one of our projects. My eyes have been opened to a pre-bid finally! I have been helping to prepare and edit final design documentation. After the meeting Susan and I spent time reviewing the notes that we took and getting organized again before jumping back into the project. We meet with our reps and get information for finishes that we will be using for the project. We are working on the carpet specification. It is difficult because we a re working with existing systems furniture in the space, so we are looking for a carpet that satisfies the needs of all of their different spaces. It is amazing how huge a difference carpet can make.

This week I met Drew Daniel, who is about 25 years old and manages 33 different reps in many different states in the east and west coast. He travels a lot, and he is working for Jasper Furniture.

The second half of the week are focused on the healthcare project. We are renovating an emergency department and designing floor patterns. We are utilizing wayfinding into the floor pattern as well as considering hygienic and practical ways to design the floor.  The great thing about this project is that we know the client very well and have a great relationship with them. They are great clients! We have fun and very interactive meetings with them.

To top my week off, I helped work on the Faulkenberry Tree House project. We spent time setting up scaffolding this afternoon so that we can start building the treehouse -It is going to be wonderful! Of course, it rained on us around 3:30 so we had to stop working (as it turns out, being underneath a giant tree on a large metal structure during a lightning storm is really not ideal). It was a great week here, and I am looking forward to next week's progress.

For our presentation techniques, we definitely extensively use our plotter and our printers. We make finish selection boards and utilize our 3d modeling softwares to show our ideas to clients.  The formats and content change immensely from client to client. With one ofour long-time clients, we have much flexibility with them and our meetings are somewhat casual. With another large and influential company, we have produced large slideshow presentations with diagrams, schematic design,  and final proposals.

We use a variety of different softwares. Microsoft Office and Adobe suite of course, CAD, Bentley Microstation, Sketchup and Form Z, and we are hoping to acquire Revit soon.

 Here's a photo of Gregor working on the Faulkenberry Tree House project:

Week 8

This week was busy. The designers know what I capable of and they now ask me to do anything and everything.

On Monday, Amy Monsees asked me to go on a job with her. The job consists of four rooms and two bathrooms. Amy Christe came also on the job. I have never worked with Amy Christe so it was good to see Amy Monsees working with a different designer.

On Tuesday, Rachel had a job with Marsha so I worked at the firm. I went through the wallpaper room and organized the products. I went through the York wallpaper discontinues. I also called vendors about pricing and availability. At the end of the day, Rachel came back for the sales prep meeting. Each month the firm has one sales prep meeting. The designer have busy schedule so it is difficult to get the entire designer staff together. The sales prep meeting has two different vendors that come represent new information to the designers. Tuesday vendor meeting was Kaleen and Craftmaster.

The rest of the week I called vendors about pricing and availability. I looked for fabrics for the designers. I also went through discontinues list of different vendors. I sent back memo to vendors.

The designer presents their ideas with the fabric books laid out so the client can see their options. The clients like to have their hand on the fabrics. The firm has showrooms that display their products. The firm has all of the Microsoft office program but no design computer programs. The designer can use their own design programs if they chose.  The format of presentation they choose is based on the client’s need.

This is Marsha who is the owner of Yessick’s Design Center. She went to school at Alabama. I haven’t told her I am a huge UT fan. She is NCIDQ certified.

Week 8

The signup deadline for the Designing Action competition is tonight at midnight!  If you or anyone you know would like to sign up it is not too late.  We have over 100 contestants from 24 different countries and six different continents.  One team from Sweden has already submitted their project, and it is amazing what some people come up with.  This is an “ideas” competition, so I have a feeling we will be getting some outrageous projects.  This week was pretty much the same as the last couple, mostly working on graphics/materials.  On Tuesday they had me photograph a new farmer’s market that takes place once a week in downtown Nashville, which was neat but really hot outside.      

Presentations are an important part of NCDC.  At least one or two days a week there will be some sort of presentation either to a small group or a large one, and all of the staff members are very good at communicating graphically and verbally.  They give presentations at things like community meetings where NCDC presents ideas to the general public and get their feedback.  These are usually very controversial and some really outspoken people attend them.  What is interesting is that the areas of town with younger people are usually excited about the city changing for the better, but the people of “old Nashville” are usually the ones that are more hesitant.  The programs used here are mostly Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign.  They use Photoshop to make before and after shots to use in their presentations, and they use Illustrator to make their boards.  NCDC has also published several book and counting, and they use InDesign for this.  People in the office are familiar with programs such as AutoCad, Sketchup, etc, but these are rarely used. 

The person of the week is Julia Landstreet, the Executive Director and my boss.  Julia’s role here is to oversee the administrative and development functions as well as cultivating relationships within the design, development, education, and civic communities.  So she is pretty important around here.  Like the other staff members, Julia is on numerous boards around town and plays an active role in the community.  She has two adorable dogs she occasionally brings in the office, and Julia has a very smart sense of humor.  

week 8: finish boards

This week I spent every day helping Alana with renderings, choosing finishes, ordering samples, laying out 4 finish boards, and getting them all assembled. It was a busy week but it was nice to be able to focus all of my attention to one project and follow it through to the end. Now all that is left to do is ship the boards out to the client! This week the Nashville ID girls got together for dinner at Erin’s and it was good to see everyone and talk about work and what everyone is doing!

On Thursday I went with some girls from the office to Post NeoCon, a vender show of sorts with the local reps showing their latest and greatest products that were featured at NeoCon in Chicago a few weeks ago. Ran into some familiar faces from UT while I was there!

UT students and grads at Post NeoCon

Presentation Techniques and Computer Applications

ESa uses many visuals in presentations to clients including plans and elevations, many times rendered to show finishes; perspectives and animated walkthroughs; and finish boards as well as loose finishes. Early on, sketches, black and white drawings and loose finishes are more common. As the project advances drawings become more detailed, and often rendered. ESa uses many programs to create these visual presentations. They use a lot of Revit, yet some older projects may still be in Microstation. The Adobe programs, Sketchup, Word, Excel, and Bluebeam are also commonly used. Our visual artists that assist in rendering 3D perspectives have a whole other kit of parts that they use.

Isaac HolemanThis is Isaac, a designer at ESa who has been with the company since he graduated from Mississippi State ten years ago. Aside from his design work, Isaac works with Leslie to keep the materials library updated and organized.

Week 8: We just got "Office Spaced"

This week was pretty crazy! Looking back we were so busy it was almost a blurr!

VCT in the staff hall in the Cancer Institute!Monday was actually pretty slow. Heather was on vacation this week and Rebecca and I got off to a slow start. We did walkthroughs of UFP, 12 East, MOB A,B, and C which were getting new carpeting, and we did a walkthrough of the Cancer Institute. We also went by and saw the rennovations being done in the Pathology department that I worked on at the beginning of the summer. We brightened up the department with a lighter paint and carpet color. It made it seem as if the lighting had been improved! Because it had been so hot and so rainy we hadn't seen the Cancer Institute in a while. It was crazy to see the progress that had happened! There is paint on most of the walls and the 4th floor has VCT! We also did a walkthrough of the Patient Registration project with Danielle from Lewis Group. She is helping us with this project (kind of like an unofficial joint venture) because we have so much on our plates with other projects. Needless to say we did a lot of walking on Monday! (I am glad I had on comfortable shoes!)

Tuesday Rebecca and I were given a huge list of work to do to prepare for a presentation for the end of the week. We needed to add some temporary signage to the new roundabout, which is a part of the new main road they built this summer! Its already open! We also had to prepare graphics and a layout for departmental progress posters. Each needed a space for individual progress as well as the goals for the hospital. We needed to have 14 printed and mounted onto foam core by the end of the week! We also had to prepare renderings of the Dirtt Wall we are working on for the new Patient Regustration project. This will be a wall which will have 8 8'x8' lightboxes with illuminated images of different scenes. This is a project I have been working on this summer, and it was almost ready for a presentation. We had no elevations of the walls, and in order to explain the project we knew we would need rendered elevations and perspectives. 

Preparing for this presentation was our goal for the remainder of the week. We had until 3PM ThursdayWorking on renderings! to do all of the progress posters, renderings, and drawings. It completely consumed the remainder of the week, but we got it done with a few hours to spare! We even had to stay late Wednesday when some last minute changes were made to the progress posters at 4:59PM! Though it didn't take too long to fix we joked about getting "Office Spaced" by our boss!

The rest of the day Thursday we organized some of the papers and work we did for the day and we opened and played with the new blown glass samples for an art installation in the Cancer Institute.

Houseboat we stayed on this weekend!Friday I started teaching Mary Beth a few things in AutoCAD before I headed to Lucas, KY for the weekend with some friends! We spent the weekend on my friend's uncle's 83' houseboat on Barren River Lake! It was the biggest boat I have been on in a lake! 16 people could sleep in it! Though it rained most of the weekend we still had fun taking out a smaller boat to cruise and go tubing! It was a great way to beat the heat that has been going on this summer!

This week was a good week to talk about presentations considering I spent most of the week preparing for one! Usually we use AutoCAD, Photoshop, SketchUp, and Corel Draw to prepare for presentations. Depending on the phase of the project we could present with drawings, sketches, color schemes, loose materials, or final finish boards. It also depends on who we present to and how formal the presentation is. Sometimes when we are just getting approvals for fabrics we will have our selections pinned up, with backups within reach. If things have already been approved and need to be presented we will have final drawings and finish boards for the clients to see.

This week I got to know Danielle from Lewis Group. I do not have a picture of her because I was so captivated in getting all the work done this week. However I did learn that she has a daughter named Hannah, which I think is a great name! She is very helpful and nice and made me feel included in meetings and walkthroughs we did with her this week.