Crafting Visual Narratives in Interior Design Through Concept Development and Presentation Techniques

Welcome to part two of our two-part series on interior design. This is lesson four. Today, we'll be talking about presentation techniques.

I'll be diving into material boards, and we will also discuss your third project or third assignment. Let's get started. First, when we talk about presentation techniques, it's important to talk about what a concept is, because the concept that you create will end up driving the visual communication for your client.

So, usually this starts with an idea, and it acts as a seed. It's the beginning of your exploration in design. A concept could be, you know, my concept is related to nature, or it's related to sustainability.

There are a variety of different ways to introduce a concept, and think of it as not only the beginning idea or the seed for the project, but think about it as something that can help you along the way when you get lost, and you're trying to figure out, okay, where should I put this object, or do the space plan, and you can go back to the concept, and your concept may give you an idea of how to create a solution for whatever particular design problem you're trying to solve. The designer obviously uses their imagination, and this is vital, and it's okay to come up with various or a variety of different concepts until you lock in the one that works best for you or your client, and I think it's important to mention this, because understanding the client can very much help you create a concept. Some questions you may ask yourself as far as how to start creating the idea of your concept for your project is, you know, what are the client's passions? Do they have hobbies, or there's things that the client is very much interested in, that they've shared with you? And again, like we talked about in an earlier lesson, that pre-project phase is an opportunity for you to get to know your client, and if you get to know your client, you can use that information as an opportunity to create your design concept.

Where is the client from? What is their background? What is their heritage? What inspired the client to hire you? Is there any hidden inspiration that they may be able to share with you to help drive the project? Is there a design aesthetic that the client relates to? In the professional world, we share inspirational images with clients all the time, because we want to get an idea of what the client's style is, and in the reality of interior design, it's important that you match the ideas or the style of your client, and every client has a different take on what aesthetics are best for them. Now, once you have this concept, you will essentially start to create a set of drawings. In the last lesson, we showed the conceptual stages and schematic design, and your concept will help develop those drawings.

So it may start with just an abstract drawing, right? And then that abstract drawing may start to develop into something functional, like a floor plan. A lot of concepts are subconscious. There's a way of thinking about the project and not trying to understand exactly what the concept should be, but exploring the subconscious a little bit to see what happens when you start sketching, what happens when you start drawing.

And honestly, there's no rules for how we as designers illustrate concept. There is no rules. So creativity is extremely important.

Concept drawings do not need to be to scale, which is, you know, we talked about earlier with scale, and we say to scale as far as drawings. You know, a floor plan could be a variety of different scales. One quarter inch equals a foot, one half inch equals a foot, and you'll dive into this with other classes that you'll take through VDCI.

But the concept itself doesn't necessarily need to be perfectly scaled. It may be very loose in nature, and it may be something that is inspired, let's say, from nature and the organic nature of, you know, the edge of a leaf or a tree pattern or, you know, the sky or the horizon. And those types of natural elements may help you derive the concept that you want to use to kind of drive the project forward.

Now, when we execute the concept, the concept is typically executed through the project, right? We can see the concept in the project. Now, where do we see this concept start to take shape? Well, obviously, in the loose sketches and the ideas that you draw initially in the schematic design phase, but you'll start to see it develop through plans and elevations and even section drawings. And we're going to talk about those in just a few minutes here.

Your concepts may show through mood boards or material boards, which we're also going to talk about in this lecture or in this lesson. You may have concept diagrams, material boards, renderings, and I'll show examples of what each of these are in just a second. So just know that the concept, as abstract as it may be in the beginning, and maybe it's not abstract.

Maybe it's an actual object or something that you're using to create the concept, right? Again, there's no rules for this. Now, if we look at just a rough sketch here, a concept diagram may have kind of a pragmatic or a practical nature to it, right? The concept could be about functionality, and we want the kitchen space to serve, let's say, three or four individuals, and we want people to kind of circulate through down this pathway. And we know that, you know, there's a staircase beyond, and you start to derive the concept based off of the functionality of the space.

And so this may start to help you determine what the concept is by looking at the actual project, right? Looking at what the client wants and thinking about the functional needs. And the concept could be as simple as creating a functional kitchen, right? A very functional kitchen. The concept is pragmatic, it's simple, and it's straight to the point so that we know the functions are able to be used by the users.

Now, when we think about presentation techniques related to floor plans, there are a variety of different ways to present, not only floor plans, but other drawings that I'll share with you in this lesson. And the first is drawing a physical floor plan. Now, just so you understand, a floor plan is an overhead two-dimensional view of the space, and I'll show a sample in just a second, and it basically shows the layout designed by the architect or the interior designer.

Rough plans can be used or inspired can be inspired by the concept sketches, right? The concept sketches may help create the actual layout of the floor plan. Plans also communicate other things. They communicate the design intent.

They communicate any special layout requests from the client. Plans are often developed in more detail as you move forward through the project. When you're moving from schematic design to, let's say, design development, those plans start to become more defined.

Final floor plans are used so the consultants and the contractors can actually build the project. And when the floor plans are completely detailed, as we mentioned in a previous lesson, when you get to construction documents, this phase is they are using these floor plans to actually build the project. So what you do with the floor plan and how you develop the floor plan is very important.

It's important to think about what it is that you're trying to achieve with the concept, the aesthetics, and the functionality of the space. Now there are a variety of different floor plan phases, right? A floor plan could happen as early as the conceptual stage, right? Conceptual design. As you're going through schematic design, you may slowly kind of play with various options, what the floor plan could be.

You may give the client three or four different options for the floor plan during your schematic design phase. The client selects a plan that they think works best, and you agree, and the two of you work through it, and then you start drawing those plans in more detail in design development phase, and so on. You move into construction documents.

Just know that when you get to construction administration, those floor plans are not only being used to build the project, but the installation is happening, right? The project is going up, and as I mentioned earlier in a previous lesson, things could potentially change, or there may be opportunities to solve problems even in the construction administration phase. So it's very common for a contractor to say, I need you to draw up a quick plan or a corner detail while we're in construction administration because I don't understand how this piece of furniture fits within the space. The drawings aren't clear.

Maybe there was some miscoordination. So just so you understand, floor plans can be drawn or really are drawn in every single phase. There's a phase for the floor plan, and as you move through the process, it develops.

Now here's an example of a schematic design floor plan, and you'll notice that we can see doors. We can see windows. We see the wall poche, which is the thickness of the wall colored in so we know what's solid and what isn't, and we can see part of the interior and the exterior relationships.

Now in the schematic design phase, the most important thing is making sure that the plan is developing with the concept and it works with the client. You can see the doors in this floor plan are very large, and the whole space opens up to the exterior, which is kind of a neat concept, and that concept may be creating a relationship to nature and saying this project's concept is about indoor-outdoor relationships, and it's about becoming one with nature. And if the concept is about becoming one with nature, the idea of these large doors that open or swing that allow you know air circulation to come into the home and allow you to catch those views and catch the breeze, that starts to illustrate the actual concept in the floor plan.

When I say your concept will be illustrated in the design itself, that's what I'm referring to. We will continue discussing presentation techniques in our next video. Thank you.

See you soon.