House Designer
Gifford Brickley
If you want to know how much a plan will cost to build and establish a construction budget early on, we offer a Cost-to-Build Estimator. Our estimator provides approximate home construction costs for any plan quickly and easily. This gives you a ballpark figure to compare to builder bids and makes it possible to calculate costs in real time, so you can make adjustments to fit your budget. We also offer a free Home Building Organizer and budgeting worksheets to detail every expense and compare product prices to help establish your building budget long before you break ground.
2024 The House Designers, LLC. All rights reserved.
All house plans and images on The House Designers websites are protected under Federal and International Copyright Law. Reproductions of the illustrations or working drawings by any means is strictly prohibited. No part of this electronic publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form by any means without prior written permission of The House Designers, LLC.
Most will be pigeonholed into one of these 2 categories. Many employers fail to realize that some people can actually do both, admittedly not everyone, but some can. However, the reality is that there is some basis in that general stereotyping. But like all stereotyping, it's not always so cut and dry. I know this black-and-white view of designers isn't always true, but that is how many employers feel about the industry.
With that in mind, realize that you can't teach creativity. However, technical requirements for many areas of production are really not that difficult to teach to someone who is detail oriented. (varies based upon final deliverables).
So, it's more beneficial for agencies to hire those who show a very creative portfolio. Technically proficient employees are a dime a dozen (and get paid less). So most high-end agencies want very creative designers, then they hire support staff for production.
If your resume is filled with production-oriented positions (such as in-house at a print company), a very creative portfolio is just about mandatory if you wish to venture out from that career track. In addition a web link that shows off your creativity. Although using something like Behance or Dribble to post work may be fine too (because employers will not be looking for someone who can build a web site... just one that can design it)
But that's not all... The primary hurdle you may run into is your resume itself. If job, after job, on your resume are all production-oriented jobs, many employers may never even care to see your portfolio assuming you are a "technical person" not a "creative person". So, the best tip I can give would be to make your resume as creative and unique as possible (but not non-functional as a resume.)
Tl;DR Shifting to a more "design" oriented career is not an impossibility... if you have the chops you can construct a portfolio and resume to show off your creativity. A portfolio doesn't have to be based upon past work. It can just as easily be based upon realistic work you want to do.
Nothing prevents you to search new jobs now. You must have some flashy designs to show. They must cover a great part of the field of the graphic design. They must show that you are creative just now, not in the distant past and you can catch something current. If you are good only in some routine work, but not in creating something, you are out of luck.
Someone must really believe in you if you hope to get a long time job. At first try to offer your services as an independent contractor, pay per job basis. Your work samples and verifiable credits (=provable accepted designs) are the thing that wakes up interest and that accumulates if you succed in selling your work.
If you have some formal education in an established art school, it is of course a plus except if all provable facts show or even leave possible that you have been kicked out due missing talent or interest.
You could probably do it yourself but regardless of the software you use, you need to make sure the engineering is done correctly and you have the documents you need for permitting and other requirements sorted out.
Thanks all. I guess I am having a hard time justifying hundreds of dollars for Sketchup vs a house design app like Planner5D or something cheap, especially if I still need to hire an architect or professional? Has anyone tried the Planner 5D or other house building apps?
Hi ? My name is Nikki and I have been a working student with the team here at iPHA for the last year. I am currently completing my Masters in Energy Science and Engineering at the University of Darmstadt after completing my Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering at Virginia Tech.
I was so excited to get started on the course, I showed up to the Institute nearly an hour early Monday morning. I was a ball of nervous excitement by the time I met up with my fellow iPHA coworker Carl, who would also be taking the course. After a short welcoming session, we were asked to introduce ourselves.
Having had very little experience in the building sector, I had never seen a lot of these insulation materials and construction systems before. Luckily, PHI has loads of samples and models, so not only did I have the opportunity to see these materials, but I was also able to handle them as well.
What I learned from this lesson, is that the way Passive House windows achieve this level of airtightness and insulation is all in the details. The spacer, coating, filling, and frame all have to be well engineered in order to get that U-value, as low as possible. Another important lesson that we learned, that would be reinforced by way of a real-world example the next morning, is the importance of proper installation.
Wednesday was ventilation day, or as Carl and I joked, Berthold day. Our colleague, Dr. Berthold Kaufmann, was to be our lecturer from 9 am until 4 pm. Which is impressive considering all the other topics and their corresponding lectures up until this point were just a few hours at a time. Dr. Kaufmann is an excellent instructor though, and easily held our attention the entire time. Before beginning with the lecture, he pointed our attention to a neighbouring building. It may be difficult to see due to the underwhelming quality photo I was able to take with my phone, but the building has just had its windows replaced.
Rather than installing the windows the way one would in a Passive House, ensuring a continuous airtight and insulated layer, the decision was made here to simply slap some windows in, surround it with some spray foam, and call it a day. Berthold pointed out, that while that may work well for a while, mould would almost certainly begin to form in a year or two, as the spray foam slowly degrades, and air, and thus condensation, begins to make its way around the installed windows. I was continuously amazed at the way all of our lecturers were able to connect the lessons we were learning with everyday examples.
Cooling and dehumidification has been a hot topic in the energy efficient building sector as of late (yes- pun intended). According to the IEA, cooling is the fastest-growing energy end use in buildings. As such, it is vital for builders and designers to understand how to incorporate passive and active cooling strategies efficiently and effectively. Dehumidification must also go hand in hand with cooling, in order to maintain the superior comfort associated with Passive House.
We began Friday by focusing on retrofits. For those of you that might not know, Passive House has developed a standard and certification exclusively for retrofits: The EnerPHit Standard. As part of this lecture, the EnerPHit standard was explained in depth. Additionally, typical problems encountered during retrofit projects, as well as their solutions, were detailed using real-world examples.
The latter half of the day was well spent discussing economics. Coming from an engineering background, I sometimes forget how other people look at the world. For the majority of people, money is the biggest motivator. Therefore, in order to convince people to invest in the Passive House standard, they need to feel assured that their investment will pay off in the long run.
In my opinion, Saturday was the most exciting day of the course. We got to see a real-life Passive House! The course happened to fall on the same weekend as the international Passive House Open Days event.
I found the overall experience of the Consultant/Designer course offered by the Passive House Institute to be equal parts entertaining and informative. I was amazed at how thoroughly each topic was discussed. The lecturers were also all very knowledgeable and engaged. 10/10 would sit through again.
As a side note: I think that it was difficult to absorb all of the information provided in the time given. Luckily, for those participants interested in taking the Passive House Designer/Consultant exam, there are a few weeks between the course and the exam itself. Additionally, we were provided with all of the notes and exercise material covered during the class. The slides are something that I will continue to look back on throughout my future career.
Do you have any questions about the Designer/Consultant course that you would like to see answered? Or did you partake in one of the other Designer/Consultant courses around the world? Leave us a comment below! ?
Two of my extremely talented teammates, Lauren and Charlene, recently shared their learnings from a Design Dept workshop. One of the most impactful takeaways was how designers should tailor their language and content to the audience they are presenting to. As designers, we love storytelling and speak in the narrative. But if our audience responds to numbers and facts, our pitch may not be as persuasive as we hoped. We leave frustrated and misunderstood.
Rephrasing the pitch to business counterparts: We see a 65% drop in adoption rates in new users after sign up. We believe optimizing our navigation can drive user adoption by 15%.