Visulisation

Visualisation is not the Product

There often appears to be a false assumption by some that the ‘product’ resulting from the services provided by a landscape and garden designer is a set of drawings or images.  This is the obvious, if incorrect perception, and it is fully understandable as a perception.  However good the visuals might be, and whatever type of communication they represent they are categorically not the product!

Landscape Design is the Product

The landscape visuals, ie: plans, sketches, 3D models and photorealistic images etc are not the product per se, they only encapsulate the notion or concepts of the product.  They are the means to a greater end.  The product itself which arises from the landscape design works, and the subsequent and necessary landscape management, which brings the concepts and notions to a material reality is the actual product.  The actual landscape or garden design is quasi intangible at the point of commission as a product, it exists only as vague desires and requirements in the mind of the client, and as problems to be solved and reconciled in the mind of the designer.

While it is true to admit that a large portion of the landscape and garden design costs are allocated to the time necessary in production of the visuals, it is however the actual design itself which is really being paid for at the point of commission.  The quasi intangible product, or design solution exists initially only in the mind of the landscape designer as a selected possibility, or series of infinite possibilities that became apparent after research, analysis and much experimentation.  It is an iterative result, or optional results emanating from the clients requirements and site problems fashioned within an erudite philosophy according to recognised principles or art, design and aesthetic composition.  The real product exists not in the present, but in the future.

The Need for Good Visuals

While an educated landscape and garden designer can verbally describe the landscape design or solution he has formulated in his mind to a client, this is a fragile form of communication at best.  The old adage from Alan Greenspan, the well known American economist who stated: “I know you think you understand what you thought I said, but I’m not sure you realise that what you heard is not what I meant.”  This being true for any verbal communication between landscape design consultant and client, it is doubly so for any verbal communication between landscape design consultant and landscape contractor!

Clearly a definitive mechanism for precise and tangible communication between professional landscape and garden designer, and his client/s or contractor/s is absolutely essential if the skill, experience, knowledge and creativity of the landscape designer’s vison is to be respected, and the clients investment is to be beneficial and rewarding.  Landscape visuals are the only viable mechanism of communication whereby we the landscape and garden designers take the otherwise intangible concepts of our design profession, and formulate them into ‘concrete’ and understandable pillars of communication.  It is the only way we can show you what we see as a solution/s to your site problems and personal expectations.  So what you are actually paying for as a client are not the visuals per se, but the: knowledge, experience, skill and creativity to juxtapose everything we know and understand at a professional level, to your site and requirements in the form of a tangible reality that can only materialise in the future.  The visuals are thus essentially prophetic visions of a potential reality that does not exist at the time of sale.

The Holy Grail of Landscape Design

If the holy grail of landscape and garden design is the creation of a strong and meaningful ‘sense of place’: essentially an emotional response within the users of a space, which is subliminally connoted by the sympathetic and holistic amalgam of certain design components and functions, (and we believe it is,) then transposing this ethereal concept from the mind of the designer to the mind/s of the client or client group is quite a task!

Aside from the gradual effects of formal education that predominantly tends to indoctrinate people to become verbally and mathematically biased, paradoxically human beings naturally think not in words and logic, but in images and emotions. Therefore, it stands to reason that the more visuals, and the higher quality of those visuals we produce, the more chance there is of us as diligent landscape designers succeeding in our objective of decisive communication. Our objective as landscape designers can then be concisely defined as, the attempt to transfer the emotional potential of the proposed design/s from our minds to the minds of others.

Types of Visuals and their Potential

Landscape and garden designers use many different types of visuals to communicate their design to clients and contractors.  Each has a different potential, and each has its own limitations, advantages, disadvantages, and time-cost implications.  Which visual we chose to use depends on what essence of the design we are trying to communicate, to whom we are trying to communicate with, and what time-cost constraints are in effect.

Graham Slocombe © October 2018