The Newsstand project was my second freelance project with Heath Ceramics, a company that continues to be one of my favorite to work with and follow. As part of their continuing efforts to engage the community they were developing a section of their San Francisco facility into a newsstand. My key role was to help them develop the documents translating the design to the fabricator.

Due to the tight timeline, my involvement began early in the design process. In these early stages, I met with Heath's internal design team and the eventual operators of the newsstand. We had a quick design charrette within the space, which would eventually house several fixtures: magazine racks, newspaper stands, a coffee car, cash wrap, etc. The projects lead designer then compiled these ideas for further development. Meanwhile, I took measurements and generated an as-built model in sketchup, which would then serve as a tool for her to develop the design.

After a few weeks, she had a design worked out to a very impressive level of detail. While it wasn't 100% locked in, it was still enough for me to start generating a 2D drawing set with the typical drawings that a fabricator would need to make the design a reality.

I often find that fabrication drawings must communicate in two directions. The designer will want them to effectively show design intent for confirmation. This usually means showing the pieces "in context" with one another to understand alignments and spacing. However, the drawings must also communicate to the fabricator, who needs the clearly understand each piece as a single object. This creates a fine line between too much information and too little, so my goal with these sets is to communicate as efficiently as possible without crowding the sheet. The final set was 8 pages of the usual suspects: plan, elevations, and a few key sections of each fixture.