Paper weight

In a drawing office or design studio inevitably you'll spend time playing with paper. In an effort to make it more exciting I ran a little experiment by  making paper airplanes from the larger sheets and playing miniature Stanstead ... didn't work.

oops.

So instead I had a look at what options were available to manage paper in an office. Depending on how you use your paper there are many options to look at.

Vertical Plan Files
Large metal cabinets which work like a large lever-arch file. For A0 or A1 paper you stick self adhesive plan strips onto the drawings.

You can get up to 1000 drawings into a single cabinet and are ideal for archiving and large capacity storage. You can have them with an anti-tilt mechanism so they stand alone and they're also great for storing drawing in plan wallets.

Mobile Drawing Trolleys & Wall Racks

Planhorse make an excellent range of storage solutions for A0, A1, B1 and A2 CAD paper. Drawings are held in clamps with each clamp capable of holding up to 100 drawings. You can mix A0 and A1 drawings up on the same trolley because they all load from one end.

This type of system is ideal for site offices or project offices where its useful to group drawings into projects and have them quickly to hand. 

Plan Chests

For that hearty traditional feel there's always the Traditional wooden plan chest. A set of either 6, 9 or 12 drawers with a choice of wood finishes. Perfect for design / art studios they provide an in-keeping way to store A0 or A1 paper.

Constructed to withstand even the most care-free art students they'll stay together, looking good just as long as a metal plan chests.

Lighting the way

Today light tables and light boxes are used for an unprecedented number of applications. Barring the usual photography and graphic design work they provide elegant solutions to problems faced by some industries; quite often nothing to do with paper or design.

Over the past 20 years we have produced lighting tables and illumination systems designed for highly specialised and industry specific procedures. One area where light boxes are extensively used is in the food industry. A professional light box is the ideal way to check the quality and consistency of food produce. Comparing bacon and the colour of tea leaves are just a few areas where having an even and reliable back light can be the key to becoming the market leader.

Testing in laboratories also may call for a large, evenly lit work surface. Calculating the absorption rate of different materials for use in nappies or other sanitary products is made easier with the correct equipment, whilst sexing flatfish is only made possible by having a strong light source to hold the fish up against.

Replicating daylight indoors by fixing light boxes in fake window frames .... we can even fit them with adjustable dimmer switches to simulate an overcast day. We are still trying to work out how to replicate night time.

Back to the drawing board

The drawing office industry is vast, no doubt. Constantly evolving over the last century to keep up with the times; it's come a long way since the dawning of the humble drawing board; when man first took pencil to paper properly.


Back in the early 20th century it would have be hard to imagine where design technology would ultimately take our society. CAD (computer aided design) has pushed boundaries and opened limitless possibilities with what we can do with materials. This, coupled with the desire of designers to be remembered for their work, has produced impressive results over the whole spectrum of design.


The Seed Cathedral is one of my recent favorites for its bonkers brilliance. It displays a way of think about construction that questions conventions built up since man started arranging stones into wall shapes. But at the heart of all this development still remains that first idea, that initial scribble on the back of a crisp packet (which is really hard if you've ever tried it). The next step is the drawing board where the idea is given a chance to really flourish for the first time. That initial sketch lays out the basics of the concept and gets it out in the open for the first time.


Drawing boards help you thrash out an idea in a way that a computer program never could. And so, with even the most cutting edge technological advances, life still started out on a drawing board. Computers have tried to emulate what a drawing board can do with limited success - at the end of the day there really is no substitute for pencil and paper.


Ultimately, computers have the major role in modern design from building skyscrapers to space stations and it's likely it'll be that way from now on. "CAD" was born the first time a computer was used to replace that final stage of drafting a finished technical drawing. Maybe though, its simply that computers can never totally replace that initial design phase.


No matter what you are designing "CAD" is almost a given in this day and age, maybe we should change it to "DAD" (drawing aided design) and celebrate the drawing board and it's legacy that still lives on.