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That is a tough story.
My current situation is also no raises for the past three years, with the potential of two more w/o. We had some furlough days, but not extra hours for sure. My job is stable , just the pay is going the wrong way. In the late 80’s when the industry crashed, I was in a similar situation to yours except: the 20% reduction…[Read more]

Having read most of what people are saying in this thread, my gut feeling is that you should start looking for a new job and only when you have one you want to take, “vote with your feet” and leave.   IF for some reason you want to stay there, use the new job offer as leverage in your current job to negotiate going back to regular salary or g…[Read more]

Definitely do it in sketch up.  Easy program to learn and mixing it with photoshop creates a nice composition.

Sorry to hear it. Sounds like a frustrating place to work. Too bad most LAs don’t apply their creativity to their business plans and just follow the financial framework, organizational development platform and corporate culture used and abused by miriad non-creative businesses.
 

Have you considered that it may not be the rendering?
 
We had an instructor that used to tell us to consider the design when we just cant get the rendering to look ‘right.’ Also, composition is important. Your composition looks pretty rigid. Is this really the ideal view of your design?

Sounds like your employer is undercutting and/or overpromising by mistreating their employees. I’m sure this is fairly common. It will not last and is a truly an unsustainable way to run a business.
 
I would consider having a talk with your boss or manager. If you sont get the answers your hoping for I wouldnt be afraid to look elsewhere for…[Read more]

The time to look for a better job is when you don’t need one. … make sure you don’t get in the position of needing one.

There is nothing worse than working in an office where you feel like you are putting your heart and soul into dumping the water out of a sinking ship.  I remember back in school when we had various professionals speak to us about how even in bad times they did their best to keep their best.  Even if this required taking a personal pay cut.  If th…[Read more]

Your bosses have figured what they can get away with, and they are evidently the kind of people who will continue to do so until they can”t.  Your “temporary” salary and job conditions are now long term.  If you cannot stomach this, my advice is to keep this job but begin looking for another one immediately.  
Reasoning, demanding one’s right…[Read more]

Tanya- you ask some very reasonable, very good questions. Questions i too have pondered. Questions i wondered why your management is not held accountable to answer.
What have you done to open communication with the partner(s)? Do they know that everyone is disgruntled?  Our office has 4 principals/partners. I talked to one of them and shared my…[Read more]

build it in sketchup, then use brushes and copies of layers in photoshop for the foliage on the screen. sketchup will also model your lettering.

I feel your pain, been there.  However, after working for several high profile firms, I have to say they are all alike.  It’s the golden rule.  Those with the gold make the rules.  7 of 10 la firms are lead by designers who become owners, who then find out how profits are ‘really’ made.  They are made by trimming the bottom line, taking adva…[Read more]

Tough call…
It’s hard to know the real motives behind business decisions. There is a lot going on behind the scenes that people on the production side are unaware of… It could be a couple of things:
1. With everybody on reduced salary they can afford to hire somebody which will increase productivity and profits while lightening your load. 6…[Read more]

For starters, when I’m fired up a reasonable discussion isn’t what I really want, but it sounds like you have plenty of disgruntled company at your firm already, so I won’t add to it…..It doesn’t sound like the morale is very good either among the people running the company….nor does it sound like your firm has very good avenues of…[Read more]

Is the new person not getting benefits?
I have quit MANY jobs, and let me tell you, a job is WAY better than no job, and sometimes another job can be pretty hard to find..
seems like you should at least be able to verbalize your complaints to the boss, if you can. Sometimes bosses are actually waiting for the push-back (and look down on the…[Read more]

So you’re not intending the screen to be covered with leaves eventually?  No vines growing on it?

I used their section D study guide. It seemed pretty reasonable; however there were a few questions in the study guide that i seriously questioned the supposed ‘correct’ answer. But that seems to be a pretty typical fault for the LARE in general. I guess the best benefit of the study guide is just going through each and every answer option that’s…[Read more]

Have you tried inverting the light/dark on the green screen? I think it would make the composition read better as well… make the screen dark, a different pattern than the adjacent shrubs, and make the letters light. Everything else in the drawing can stay the same. It will make the entryway draw the viewer into the space and the lettering will…[Read more]

In Colorado you can perform ‘landscape design’ as long as you dont cal yourself a ‘Landscape Architect.’
 
Public work requires a stamp, but even that said it isn’t ‘illegal’ for a landscape designer to design a public landscape. They just cant stamp the construction docs, so it often makes more sense for a client to hire the person who can…[Read more]

I’m not sure which state you are in, but you can usually drive a bus through any practice act when you get to the exemption list. Basically,”no one else can do this work except anyone who does this work and does not call himself a landscape architect”.
Practice Acts are almost all Title Acts when the rubber hits the road. At least the ones that I…[Read more]