David Cristiani

Why don’t you insert one of each plant block that is used in the drawing off to the side – all inserted at a scale of one. select them all and check the properties like Chris mentioned. That way you know if the flaw is within one of the blocks, or if a random block(s) somehow had one of the scale properties adjusted.
 
Are some of your plant b…[Read more]

The fine balance between regulation, visibility, volume parking, being noticed, and maintenance.
 
Here is one (actually 2 and a service center in between) in my neck of the woods … or sand bar as it were.

Also, the curb radius is so small that they had to use paint to widen the implied island  – you can look at it as taking away from the planting isle or taking away from potentially more parking spaces when added up throughout.
 
…. is that lawn in the island or weeds from lack of maintenance? That brings up the issue of filling beds with p…[Read more]

Aside from the shrubbery completely blinding the drivers, it appears to be rather steep right to left in the parking spaces  making doors fly open or slam shut (on fingers and legs) … hard to tell from a picture.

It looks to me that most jobs that are out there are for subordinates rather than people who are or who could quickly be high on the totem pole. One of the biggest concerns is training your next competitor and introducing him to your clients.

Depending how much regulation and permitting you have in Calgary, attend hearings to see what’s going on and keep your eye out for opportunities – direct or general ones that you can position yourself to fill a niche in the future.

Getting the work is the hard part. My strategy has been to make sure that those who are already getting the work (busy architects and builders doing the types of projects you want to be doing LA work for) have a reason to refer me instead of someone else. We all tend to think that better design gets that done, but I’m talking about letting some of…[Read more]

I assumed that you had staff. Good info none the less.
 
Hopefully, someone who does or did have staff in their own firm will chime in.

Bob,

You are a good person to ask this question of. How would you react to a current employee showing work from your office while trying to get a job with another firm?

By the way, you are showing a lot of integrity by asking this question and having reservations about using material that you worked on without getting approval. Hopefully, your prospective employer will see this because it is a virtue that is very hard to detect and far more rare than it should be. You can’t teach integrity.
 
 

I’m glad that someone knows how everyone else wants to live. The part that is left out is that the people that have the money to truly do what they want to do might live there, but they’ll want their ocean front McMansion on Cape Cod, their ski chalet in Vermont, and their condo in a Florida golf course community as well. … that is what people…[Read more]

J. Robert,
 
Brian learned from his dad as well. Perhaps you have heard of him – Mike Lin?

… and Washington State.
 
I did my share to incinerate what I could some time ago and have a very hard time remembering believing that it is a cure all. It might, however, give rise to the notion that green walls will cure flooding and stop global warming …. “and it will cure your asthma, too”.
 
Poncho by Sears (someone will know the reference)

If my sarcasm is not coming through, I find the whole green roof/wall thing making a huge impact on the environment to be just as ridiculous as marijuana being a universal cure all (not saying it does not help a few things, just not all the things people are pretending it helps).
 
 
 

How long before medical marijuana and green walls are combined with a few tomatoes and we can finally get rid of engineers, drug companies, Super Walmarts, and Monsanto?
 
It is going to be interesting to see how history views some of these things in a few years.

The same may be said about the green wall. I’d go with hokey. …. nothing against green walls, just the incredible amount of unrealistic earth saving attributes that go with their promoters.

When are they going to propose giant sponges everywhere?
 

Whether you draw with CAD, photoshop, or hand, it still makes sense to apply the same techniques taught to us in our hand graphics classes. I’m anything but a graphics guru, but I believe that starts with line weights (also known as line hierarchy). As the plan comes together, light, shade, and shadow add that “life” that J. Robert is talking…[Read more]

Have you considered any top grafted trees like Prunus subhitella ‘pendula’ that will give you your trunk size, stem height, and have limited vertical growth?

I use AutoCAD LT which costs about $900.

There are many Intellicad programs out there which are full ACAD clones that run around $300.
 
there are free photoimaging programs like paint.net or Gimp, but they are not the same as photoshop – maybe good enouh for what you want to do or maybe not.