Presentation board format…..help!!!

[Debbie James]

As a student, I am trying to figure out what is a good method in presenting my design project for a plan view of a linear urban watershed that is 6miles long. My boards or panels cannot be longer than 30×42 and I am limited on qty of 8 but can stretch it to 11 boards. I am using a cad parcel map of the area, which gives a cleaner look, but will add some context to the edges of the watershed. I am stuck because I would like to use a 1:100 scale that would show fairly good detail, but it would take a lot of boards, so I went down to 1:200 scale, but now the detail seem to be lost, but I can fit the area by using 4- 30×42 boards. Mainly, the detail would have bridges, overlooks and a sustainable discovery center with an outdoor learning garden etc. I will have some enlargements of some of the main focus on other boards. My big idea is weaving the community and secondary is a smart park or educational park along this watershed, so I think it would be important to show the entire stretch if all possible. Would anyone know how I can tackle this?

[nca]

You really can’t show enought detail with 8 or even 4 40×32″ boards?? That seems like an aweful lot of detail. Maybe I’m misunderstanding your dilemma.

[Michael Spencer]

I am guessing that figuring this out is part of the exercise, if an unseen part…I am thinking, along with Nick, that you have a LOT of space.

Try using your first board to show the entire site at a suitable scale and then show details? Isn’t this the straightforward way to do this? I wonder if the point of this exercise is to force you to consider how a central concept is applied to disparate parts of the site.

By the way you have bitten off a huge project.

[Debbie James]

Thanks for your reply and Nicks too. This is part of my dilemma for my thesis presentation in June and yes its a big project…I didnt know I would have scale issue until you start doing the process. I wanted to show the 6 miles of watershed of the design details along its route that i did, but I guess in order to do that, I would have to have at lease a 100 scale drawing. If i do that for the 6 miles, it would take 8 boards because i would have to sort of connect the boards to show the watershed masterplan and that is way too many boards just for that, but it would look cool. But yes, I would have a lot of space or context if i print out 42×30. Hmmmm….so I was thinking perhaps I would trim out a lot of the context, but show enough, which the design would be 15×42 and that would give me enough at the bottom of the design to show enlargements, sections etc. So, I would still have 8 boards for the masterplan, but have enough room to show other stuff on the boards. Does this make sense?? or is there a better way?

[David J. Chirico]

Are you restricted to just boards? Is PowerPoint not an option?

[Debbie James]

Thanks for reply David and nope cannot use powerpoint because if its awkwardness of going back and forth on the slides if need be. I will work with my instructor to see, but just trying to get a feel out there to see if someone has done something like this before.

[Tim Marten]

Use hyperlinks to slides with in your power point. I hide my hyperlinks in images or along the bottom and always have a page of them at the end so I can 1 click my way back to a slide or section. My midterm thesis presentation was a hurdle also, i had to present a 169 tab excel file that was my modeling and analysis, I dont think the department was ready for that one. Good Luck it’s always to little or to much space…

[Lee Attinger]

I’d use Acrobat over Powerpoint. My school is really critical if you decided to present digitally so Powerpoint presentations usually won’t fly. If you know Flash or Premiere Pro thats even better.

[Kevin J. Gaughan]

Debbie, I think I would suggest not trying to show the whole thing at a readable scale. If your theme is weaving the community, then use your main watershed plan graphic to represent this idea through simple bold graphics and rendering (concepts don’t need to show too much detail, its an idea, not a design). I think this could easily be accomplished at 1:200 scale. I would then maybe do a series of vignette’s along side of the plan to start to tell the story about the smart park idea. I think some quick sketches of the bridges, overlooks, and discovery centers will be much more compelling than seeing them in plan at 1:100 scale. I hope this helps. Good luck!

[Debbie James]

Thanks Kevin for the reply. Yep now that I have read your comment, you are absolutely right! I guess I was going for the pretty big picture for people to understand, but like you said the vignettes has to tell the story. I wish there were sample thesis work online for layout suggestions, I guess i have to go to my school’s resources. Thanks!

[Kevin J. Gaughan]

You are welcome. Hope it goes well…you will have to give us a report after your presentation on how it went!

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