Useful Stuff

Idea Cards

   Spam has had a curious effect on us, according to Seth Godin and others: it has conditioned us to click the Delete key almost instantaneously. The side-effect is that people now care even less about your company and all it's carefully-considered branding (unless they're trying to sell you something.) What is filling the vacuum? Ideas. It's no stretch to say that the Era of the Corporation is giving way to the Era of the Idea.

   But many of our departments haven't gotten that memo yet. Take business cards, for example. If the only reason most people keep your card is because they want to sell you something, then you should consider the money spent on the cards to be your investment in creating a bunch of incoming sales pitches. Huh??? Who wants that? But what's the alternative?

   How about "idea cards" as the paradigm to replace business cards? People care less now about businesses (other than their own) and more about ideas, so why not?

   Full disclosure... I stumbled into this almost completely by accident. Here's how: I founded the New Urban Guild, which has hosted a number of initiatives, including Project:SmartDwelling. SmartDwelling I was published in the Wall Street Journal in late April, just before the Congress for the New Urbanism's CNU17 in Denver. I talk to lots of people at an event like CNU, and when it's over, I often have a hard time remembering who was talking about which great idea. And without a contact to attach the idea to, good follow-up simply won't occur.

   But then it occurred to me: Why not do a Project:SmartDwelling card? Project:SmartDwelling isn't a company, a department, or a division of anything. It has no checking account nor corporate documents. It's just an idea... an idea I wanted people to be able to come back to later. So I did the card. Here's the front:

   And here's the back of the card:

   The response has been great! Because the card's about a cool idea instead of about me trying to sell you something, everybody wants one. I'm about to have to reprint.

   Then, something else occurred to me: I still have normal business cards for the New Urban Guild and for Mouzon Design... but what about using them to promote another big idea? The New Urban Guild Foundation has been hosting the Original Green initiative for several years. The Original Green is the set of principles upon which Project:SmartDwelling is based. So why not use the otherwise blank space on the back of my "normal" cards to promote the Original Green idea? Again, the Original Green isn't a company or anything of the sort... it's just an idea. So here's what the backs of my cards look like now:

   FWIW, if you're interested in reading more about SmartDwelling I, I've blogged about it a lot on the Original Green Blog:

   The Beginnings of Project:SmartDwelling

   The Tower of Wind & Water

   The Wall Street Journal Story on SmartDwelling I

   SmartDwelling I Windows & Shutters

   SmartDwelling I Green Walls

   SmartDwelling I Laundry Eave

   SmartDwelling I Sideyard Sail

   SmartDwelling I Kitchen Garden

   SmartDwelling I Invisible Things

Image Keywords

   I've finally got my keyword system running... I first blogged about it in Image Management Breakthrough a few months ago. Later, I blogged about my image taxonomy, but that was before I bought a taxonomy from Controlled Vocabulary. What's an image taxonomy? It's a system of classifying and arranging things. As you might guess, I've spent a lot of time since then weaving the Controlled Vocabulary taxonomy into my own. It takes a bit of time to but the entire world into order. My top-level categories, FWIW, are:

Architecture

Art

Building

Creature

Environment

Event

Issue

Location

Object

Plant

Scene

Texture

Thoroughfare

Transportation

   Obviously, this taxonomy is built around architecture and urbanism, as some of the categories would never be top-level in a comprehensive system. But that's the important thing... having a taxonomy that works for you. Because the point is to be able to put the proper keywords in place as quickly as possible. Here's how my system works at this moment:

   I do all my keywording in Photo Mechanic, which I'm growing to love more all the time. It's similar to Lightroom, but while I'm normally a big Adobe fan, this is one instance where a competing product is clearly better, faster, and more nimble.

   I begin by selecting all images in a folder, which in my system, means that they all were shot in the same location. I click Command-I, which brings up the IPTC Stationery Pad. It already contains my name, copyright, and contact info... all I need to do is to select the location under Keywords. My taxonomy includes Continent, Nation, State or Province, County or Region, City, and where applicable, Neighborhood (or other notable feature.) This is the first pass.

   Next, I go through the images of buildings, selecting all buildings of the same type, and assigning the appropriate keywords, where the top levels of my taxonomy are:

Building

    Massing (subcategories not shown)

    Part (subcategories not shown)

    Type

Agriculture (subcategories not shown)

Attachment (subcategories not shown)

Business (subcategories not shown)

Civic (subcategories not shown)

Curious

Education (subcategories not shown)

Industry (subcategories not shown)

Infrastructure (subcategories not shown)

Live/Work (subcategories not shown)

Medical (subcategories not shown)

Mixed Use (subcategories not shown)

Recreation (subcategories not shown)

Religious (subcategories not shown)

Residential (subcategories not shown)

   This is where Photo Mechanic really shines. If you do all further keywording after setting the location using the Image:Structured Keywords panel (Command-Option_K) then the program very intelligently lays the new keywords over the existing so long as you do this: First, click Clear to clear out the current keyword collection which will still be there from the last ones you did. Then drill down to the bottom level keyword you're looking for... maybe it's Building, Type, Business, Retail, [Product], Food, Grocery. Click Add Path. This adds the entire path above except [Product] because square brackets around a word mean that it's just a category, and categories don't get added into the path. So clicking Add Path will add Building, Type, Business, Retail, Food, Grocery to the keyword collection. Then click Apply Path to Selected. This is very important... if you do this, it will add these keywords to your existing keywords for each selected image, rather than replacing them. This allows you to select every image in a folder with a certain characteristic and layer that on. Also, if there's both a grocery store in the picture and also a coffee shop, when you come back and drill down to Building, Type, Business, Food Service, Cafe and do what's described above, it will just add Food Service, Cafe to the end of the existing keywords, rather than adding the entire chain and therefore having duplicates. Very smart, Photo Mechanic! Thanks!

Chart Drawing System

   I'm doing this post primarily so I can remember this information, but just in case anyone else finds this useful, please use it. I've developed a fairly decent method of drawing graphs, and want to be consistent. Here's a link to one such chart. Here's the method:

   I use Numbers to create the chart, but that's almost inconsequential since I change a number of the characteristics. From numbers, I print to a pdf file, then open the file in Illustrator. I create four layers: Background, Shadows, Value Steps, and Data Series from bottom to top. They're fairly self-explanatory, but here's what they contain in detail:

   Background contains a single rectangle that's 8" wide and 4.5" tall (16:9, which is cinema proportion) because this is also the size I use for the default image window on the Original Green blog. The rectangle is 18% grey.

   Shadows contains the shadows of each of the data series lines, and also the key lines, if there is a key. Shadows are 36% grey. Shadow lines are copied from the Data Series lines and then moved 1/32" (0.03125") from the data series lines at an angle of 225° (down and to the left.) This will almost always cause some of the shadows to fall off the chart, so you'll have to copy the background rectangle to the Shadows layer, remove the fill and make it a Clipping Mask on the shadow lines to clip off the parts of the lines that fall outside the chart. Otherwise, it looks weird to have a shadow on an empty place.

   Value Steps are horizontal lines indicating major value steps. Usually, I divide the chart into 4 to 7 value steps. These lines are black, and 0.5 point stroke. All text also occurs on this layer. Text is Bembo Std Regular, 18 point, set to Small Caps because the digits are so beautiful this way (and also easier to read than normal digits because of the ascenders and descenders.) Letters are all typed in lowercase, so because it's set to Small Caps, they're all caps.

   Data series lines are 4 point, butt cap, mitered corners, miter limit of 10. Colors are:

H88 S74 B75

H60 S74 B92

H40 S74 B88

H20 S74 B80

H0 S74 B72

H300 S74 B63

H210 S74 B54

H180 S74 B61

H120 S74 B68

iWeb Disaster Averted

   I thought I had a disaster on my hands this morning, but discovered a workaround. I'm about to go on the road for awhile, and needed to figure out another workaround: how to eliminate the font spacing problems Snow Leopard caused in iWeb, Pages, and Numbers. Some fonts are OK, while others are really screwed up. Hoefler Text, which is the font of all of my new websites (Original Green, New Urban Guild, and Mouzon Design) experiences tons of extra space between lines in Snow Leopard, totally screwing everything up.

   Because I didn't want to mess with the Original Green site, I created a new site with the default Site name (www.originalgreen.org/Site) and fiddled with the spacing until it was right. For the record, 14 point Hoefler Text Regular requires a line spacing of 0.72 in Snow Leopard to look just like itself at a line spacing of 1.2 in Leopard. Mission accomplished. Or so I thought.

   On a whim, I keyed in http://www.originalgreen.org, and to my horror, it went to http://www.originalgreen.org/Site, not http://www.originalgreen.org/OG, which is the real Original Green site. I did some Googling and discovered that I could delete the Site files fairly easily. They were on my iDisk at Web>Sites. When I got there, I found both the OG folder and the Site folder. I deleted the Site folder. Now, when I went to http://www.originalgreen.org, MobileMe gave me an error message. So it was still looking for Site, which was no longer there. I went to the OG site, created a dummy blog post, and posted it, hoping that would reset whatever was pointing to the now nonexistent Site. No luck. 

   After another frantic round of Googling yielded nothing, I noticed that within the iDisk>Web>Sites folder, there are two files I couldn't account for: index.html and Sites.rss. I copied them to my desktop for safekeeping and deleted them off my iDisk. I made a minor change to the dummy blog post on the OG site, published it, and everything's fine!!

The Unmentionable Gate

Almost every airport has one...

Dimension Dimensions

  Subject line looks like a typo? It's not. What I mean is, where do you put dimensions on the page? How far are they from other things? Dimension strings should not be spaced too far apart, or they waste space. But if they're spaced too close together, the dimensions are hard to read, and can be confusing. Our standard is to space parallel strings 1/4" apart. Our dimension font is Copperplate 31AB because no font I've seen combines beauty so well with extreme numerical legibility. We use 7 points for the font size. While this may seem small, this particular font is designed larger than most, so it's highly legible. And it fits really well in the 1/4" dimension slot.

   How far should dimension strings be from other drawing objects? It depends on whether the dimension is above or below the object. By "above," I mean: the number is outside of the dimension line, or away from the line from the object. By "below," I mean the opposite: the number is between the dimension line and the object. Because text on architectural drawings should read either from the bottom of the sheet (regular upright text) or from the right side of the sheet (text turned 180° counter-clockwise) dimension strings above the object will either be to the top side or the left side of the page from the object, and dimension strings below the object will be the opposite: to the bottom of the sheet or to the right side of the sheet from the object.

   When the dimension is below the object, then the minimum space from the object should be the same as the space between lines: 1/4". Because if that's the minimum space you need for the text to read clearly between dimension lines, then you also need that much when the text is between the dimension line and the object it's dimensioning. When the dimension is above the object, however, it can be closer because you don't have to fit the dimension text between the dimension line and the object. But it can't be too small, or you confuse the dimension line with the object itself. We use 1/8" as the minimum standard dimension of the dimension line from the object when the dimension is above the object.

   There are special conditions. Dimensions on floor plans are spaced further away, for reasons that will be covered in another post. Another special condition is the set of dimension strings to the right of secondary drawings such as details and wall sections. The border around secondary drawings isn't just for visual clarity; it is also an organizing device for dimensions and text. Justifying dimensions and text to the border does two things:

   A. It visually strengthens the modules on the page, making the drawings read more quickly at a glance, directing the eye to appropriate information.

   B. It pulls this information away from the drawing itself, allowing the drawing elements to read more cleanly rather than having them muddied up with close-in dimensions and text.

   For the purpose of "dimension dimensions," the border is treated as a drawing element. In other words, the first dimension string on the bottom of the detail or the right side of the detail is 1/8" from the border since it's "above" the border as defined above. The top dimension string, because of being below the border, is 1/4" from the border. There is no dimension string to the left of the detail, as this zone is reserved for text.

Primary vs. Secondary Drawings

   This post references primary and secondary drawings. What are they, and what are their differences? A primary drawing is one of the following:

   A. Any site plan drawing showing the entire site, including the site plan, paving plan, grading plan, site utilities plan, etc.

   B. Any plan drawing illustrating the plan view of the entire building, including a floor plan, foundation plan, framing plan, roof plan, electrical plan, etc.

   C. Any elevation drawing showing a full face of the building (as opposed to an elevation detail.)

   D. Any interior elevation showing a full wall (as opposed to an interior elevation detail.)

   E. Building Sections.

   Primary drawings are placed on the sheet without borders, located vertically tight to the bottom guideline on the drawing stationery. The bottom guideline is located to allow for appropriate dimension strings, section cut symbols, door & window symbols, etc. To locate the primary drawing horizontally on the sheet, figure out how many modules you need for the drawing by measuring the drawing itself and then adding space for dimension strings, etc. needed on either side of the drawing. Then round up to the next nearest full module size. Each module is 5"; the space between them is 1/4". So if the total space you need for the drawing plus left and right dimension strings is 49' - 6" at 1/4" scale, then the actual drawing plus dimension will be 12-3/8" wide. So you need three modules of width (5" x 3 plus 1/4" space x 2 = 15-1/2") for the drawing to fit. So center the drawing on the three modules.

   Secondary drawings include the following:

   A. Any detail drawing, whether it be a plan detail, section detail, or elevation detail.

   B. Wall sections.

   C. Component sections, such as dormer sections.

   Secondary drawings are placed after the primary drawings, and fit around them to fill the sheet. As a visual hint, secondary drawings do get a border, which is a .13mm line around however many modules the secondary drawing occupies. So if it's a one-module drawing, then the border will be 5" x 5". If it's three modules high and one module wide, then the border will be 5" x 16-1/2" (3 5" modules plus 2 3/4" spaces between tops and bottoms of modules.) Layout lines exist on all stationery drawings for these modules, so you don't have to do any calculations; rather, you just have to snap to the appropriate points on the Layout Lines layer to draw the border.

Drawing Numbering

   Drawing layout on a sheet should begin from the right side and work left due to the left binding. The worst possible thing is a drawing along the left binding with a bit of white space separating it from the rest of the drawings on the sheet. I've seen contractors unroll only to the point that it looks like the drawings are running out, and then stop, never seeing the leftmost drawing(s.)

   But just because you organize the sheet from the right doesn't force numbering from the right. I'm hyper-sensitive to this because of working in an office years ago which was not nearly rigorous enough about drawing numbering. This was back in the 1980s when we had xeroxed details on sticky-back film (forget what the official name was) that were stuck down onto the mylar sheets. As details were stuck on as the job progressed, they were numbered. So the numbers were all over the place according to the chronology of when the details were put on. CAD methodology can be identical, with this exact problem. Occasionally, numbers were skipped, or sometimes duplicated if someone didn't notice that there was already a detail 7 on the sheet.

   We are completely rigorous about numbering according to the following system:

   A.    Lay the primary drawings on the sheet (floor plans, elevations, building sections) and annotate them with letters (A, B, C.)

   B.    Drop the secondary drawings on the sheet, annotating them with numbers (1-24). The top row of modules are 1-6, the second row is 7-12, etc. The ONLY thing that matters is where the drawing number box of the detail is located. If it's a single-module detail (5" x 5") located in the upper right corner, then it's Detail 6, even if there's not another detail on the sheet.

   Builders very quickly learn that if they're looking for Detail 19, it's in the lower left corner. They don't have to search for it. I've had many builders thank me for doing it this way, expressing frustration at having to search for the detail when the numbers are all over the page. They claim that it saves countless hours over the years, in tiny little bites. The only problem is that this system only works when there's a consistent grid. Without it, there is no "12 slot" or "15 slot" in which to consistently look for a detail.

Combining Drawings

   Drawings may often be combined, depending on the scale of the project. If the design is a small cottage with a compact footprint, it makes no sense to scatter drawings over many sheets with lots of blank space. White space on a page may be great for high-design magazines, but it doesn't make sense for architectural working drawings. Not only does it waste paper, but it also means that information is scattered over more sheets, increasing the likelihood that the builder will miss something. So if drawings are to be combined, which are the most likely candidates?

   A. Details are the ultimate wild cards, able to go on many sheets, but they go last. First, place the main drawings on the sheet. Next, place the notes that pertain to those drawing types. Finally, fill the remaining slots with details. Drawing notes are tied to the drawings they reference, but details are freer to move to other sheets.

   B. Elevations are easily combined. As a rule, put all exterior elevations on a single sheet if possible, only using subsequent sheets where necessary. Just make sure that you're able to get all the elevation notes on, too.

   C. Floor plans of multiple levels may be combined on the same sheet. Just make sure you're using main level stationery. This is because the Roof Plan has its layers on the first level stationery, but not the upper levels stationery. This is because the roof has to cover all levels. If you combine layers, then the stuff that would have gone on the Floor Framing Support layer had you used the upper level stationery should go on the Foundation Plan layer instead.

   D. If the plan is really small and one story, like a Katrina Cottage, then you can also combine foundation or electrical plans with the floor plan. Draw everything on the right layers to begin with, then copy all foundation or electrical plan drawing elements to the Dimension Layer and group it. That way, when you turn on the Floor Plan Final sheet, everything will be there. It's easier to do this than to have to manually fix the layers every time you change the layer setup, because the foundation and electrical layers don't show up when you're on the Floor Plan Final sheet.

   The following images are from one of my very small Katrina Cottages, and illustrate a lot of these combinations. Click on each image for a larger view, since they're nearly illegible here:

Twitter Observations

   I've been Twittering in earnest for a few weeks now, and have a few observations:

   A. Some things work at one point and don't as you progress. For example, I'm currently following @greenforyou, but am about to stop. Why? Every day, they thank everyone who commented on their Tweets in the past 24 hours. Because they're now big, it's a really long list... so they jam up the timeline with countless Tweets that mean nothing to anyone except the people they're thanking. Great idea when you're small; really bad idea once you get big.

   B. Make copious use of hashtags. These are the words preceded by the pound sign (#green, for example). These flag your Tweets for people who are following those hashtags, so many more people are likely to see your Tweets than otherwise would.

   C. If you're gonna do a hashtag then try to incorporate it into the text of the Tweet instead of adding it at the end like most people do. This simply conserves more of the 140 characters that you get to make each Tweet, so you can do a better Tweet rather than having the last half be hashtags that don't contribute to the Tweet's readability.

   More later...