Blog

Whoa, where did the month go? Well we can’t let the month get away without another Photoshop tutorial! In this tutorlal we’ll go behind blanket blend modes and look at a more advanced level of blending with a highly useful yet mostly overlooked and misunderstood feature hidden away in the Layer Style palette. This feature allows you to hide or show elements automatically without the need of a brush or mask. This is a great technique when dealing with things that are impossible to crop and even the Blend Modes won’t work right because you may not want the entire object to blend, only specific areas. What if you want to create an image montage of a kid running through a misty fountain? Or birds flying through clouds? Or a fireworks celebration off the water from your newly ...Read More

Susan Cohan, APLD is a certified landscape designer. Her practice specializes in residential landscape design in the NY metropolitan region. Susan’s work has been featured in traditional and digital print as well as other media outlets. Her blog Miss Rumphius’ Rules features work in progress, musings on the creative process and insights on design, she also edits the APLDNJ blog and is passionate about Social Media. A founding member of the NJ chapter of the Association of Professional Landscape Designers (APLD), she also serves on its International Board of Directors as Membership Chair. Susan, first of all let me commend you for bringing recognition of the APLD (Association of Professional Landscape Designers) to Land8Lounge. I understand that you are the founder of the APLD’s New J...Read More

Cleve West is one of the UK’s leading contemporary landscape designers. A five time Royal Horticulture Society gold medal winner, West has contributed to Gardens Illustrated Magazine, and currently writes a weekly column for the Independent as The Urban Gardener. I had the opportunity to meet Cleve West and the one thing that struck me was, he is a designer who follows his own path throughout all his artistic endeavours. I hope this interview offers insight to West’s contribution, beyond the garden. Christian Barnard – Urban food cultivation is currently experiencing a much deserved surge in popularity and awareness. You have been highly involved in the promotion and pursuit of this movement. Where do you see the practice of urban food cultivation heading in the future? C...Read More

I have to admit my first attempt to read Ian McHarg’s Design with Nature while in school was haphazard to say the least. But there was drinking, tomfoolery to be had, and skirts to chase, what concern did I have with the environment and my impact on it as a designer. Well now that I’m older, wiser, and MUCH more mature (pronounced MU-T-OOR) I’ve been revisiting icons of landscape architecture literature. After reading Design with Nature I felt an immediate connection to McHarg’s belief’s and amazed by his teachings, written in 1969, are the very principles which some landscape architects today hale as “New Trends” in landscape architecture known as sustainable design. Well it’s certainly not new, and isn’t sustainable design synonymous with the practice of landscape architecture? Its unfor...Read More