Vanessa Borg -Interior designer 5#

Vanessa Borg -Local Interior Designer


The concept of the project I am going to deliver is about lighting design, which Vanessa Borg has proposed. The designated area she worked on, was an installation inside Xi'an international airport of China.

When she worked abroad from her experience working within different companies, when meeting the clients, most often she either had meetings in the company's office, other times the client asks to meet at a particular place or on site, and if the distance was an issue, they usually will have an initial meeting and for the rest of the duration of the project they will communicate by email or phone.

Although this designer is Maltese, from her past experiences and studies that she has from abroad, especially on approaches on how to communicate with the clients, this made me realise and understand that for certain circumstances, such as long distances, you have to find ways on how to communicate. Luckily nowadays it is not such a problem.

After meetings or discussions that will be held, first she gathers all the information about the project. Points out the understanding of any limitations of what the clients wants.

When it comes on the site analyses, she will either have a detailed site survey and a photographic survey, together with natural light analysis and building orientation.

After studying everything about the specific project including the areas intended to be changed or designed, she starts coming out with typical and ideal processes followed by the clients requirements. this depends on the type of the client, project and time frame.

After brainstorming some ideas she starts working on the initial concept using technical drawings packages, such as Auto Cad.


      Lighting concept

Further design development including extra technical information and details of the chandelier design and lighting, as 3D artistic visuals she used the photoshop and In Design programs. 

   Technical Information and details -Chandelier Design

For modelling and visualisation she used 3Ds Max and vray softwares.



    Chandelier Colour Lighting Proposal

The 3D scenes are modeled in 3Ds Max and then visualised in the same software. Vray is used as a plugin for materials, lighting and rendering and photoshop is used for post production work.


Analysing the CAD programs used by all designers, the majority use the 3Ds Max and the Vray plugin, aswell as the photoshop. This is because the effectiveness of the digital media softwares have a good finishing quality work and more realistic visualisation on the presentation, that would be more compelling to the client.

What this designer has used in addition while working, was the Indesign software. This aided her to create and include typographic layout.

Neil Pace O'Shea -Interior Designer 4#

Neil Pace O'Shea -Interior Designer

Neil Pace O'Shea is a local designer whom I interviewed, where he mastered his studies based on Interior Design.

The way this designer communicates with the client is either through email or meeting them in person (if there's the need), in cases where there will be the necessity to discuss certain 'important' circumstances like; measurements, design elements, spaces, suggestions, etc.  

The work revolves around architectural visualisation and on occasions interior design.

The technical use for his designated work are the 3Ds MAX using the v-ray plugin within and photoshop used for post production.

The picture below is one of the final concept designs he had created for a special enterprise.


3Ds MAX with VRAY plugin and Photoshop

When a client comes to ask what he/she desires, they will already have a plan on how and what they want, they will be quite decisive. Therefore at this stage you have to follow and create the design as much as possible closely to what they're asking for, and then it would be much easier when it comes to selling the proposal design.


After the client will give the thoughts and project details, he starts by selecting the required plans and elevations, and starts cleaning them from unnecessary technical details and import them into CAD software. Then he goes through the process of modelling various shapes in 3D, by attaching, materials and lighting and rendering.

After the drafts will be rendered, he will send it to the client and waits for the clients feedback to know whether he needs to produce another level of quality, until the client will be satisfied with the result. This may take to 2 or 3 times drafting, depending on how complex their designs are.

From the result of the softwares Neil Pace O'Shea used, makes the finishing look and the quality, professional. It's clean, simple and effective in the way of how the visualising result can give you quite a good and clear idea of what you want.

Alex Hogrefe 2#

Alex Hogrefe -Master of Architecture

Alex Hogrefe is an Architecture where he mastered his studies in the university of Miami. I will be showing some of his working process in using different cads and other finalised work, which was found in his portfolio. What fascinates me, is his visual aspect and vogue that he has based on, modern architecture style.


This is one finalised work of Hogrefe's, where he put the emphases on 3D model texture and render settings.

Boston Culture Center Daytime Perspective





This is where more or less, started out his working process:


The program he's working with is Photoshop and which first he begun with several images exported from Sketchup and a render engine such as V-Ray. As we can see at the image above he started by doing the layer management, where possibly and preferably you can organise the files into groups, tagged with names or titles and keep everything in order. This is to avoid a lot of mix-up filings and get into more complicity.

  Further more using the images he included the base rendering, a reflection export, refraction export, line work, ambient occlusion pass, z-depth, Alpha, etc. These were all used for the base of the image. After those layers will be compiled, then he applied the mask to remove the sky and background elements using the Alpha layer.

After he compiled the base files he started setting the sky tone, impacting the colouring and mood that gives the image a good motion. After that he brings in the background elements that include the surrounding site of the buildings and landscapes. Then he added the ground plane group which represents the road textures, sidewalk textures and green areas like grass.



What's left of the image is the detail of the light, cars, people and trees. In the image there's a lot of detail of the building interior such as the glass and interior information, furniture and lights.

After having the base, sky and ground plane done, you'll be able to insert the trees, cars and people along with the shadows controlled. At the end you add a layer of palette that contains colours overlay, sun glare, fog and overall adjustments. The last step is something important to do because it gives an illustrated character and atmosphere.

At the final illustration he used filters/plugins, added or arranged some details and refined the colouring. All this is to have an efficient workflow and to produce a cleaner work.




The Atpmosphere:


This is another illustrated work where again he used the photoshop to range all of the editing exposed features  using these techniques; started by playing with the colour overlay, created an atmospheric Fog, adjusted the levels, and made an image softening which is clearly shown in the picture.



As 3D Rendering is based to bounce the light around them and generate more realistic lighting conditions. Kerkythea is a free rendering software, which Hogrefe suggested in his opinion, he said that he found the kerkythea software work very well with Sketchup.



These are other works of Alex Hogrefe illustrations using other methods and techniques to create a splendid fine interior and other abstract work.


Visitor Center Interior Perspective





Urban Abstract Perspective








Web search:
Hogrefe, Alex. 'Train Pavilion Interior Study | Visualizing Architecture'. Visualizingarchitecture.com. N.p., 2015. Web. 2 Nov. 2015.

Dylan Mallia -Interior Designer 3#

 Mallia Dylan -Local Interior Designer

This is a designer whom I interviewed and has specialised on interior design. From his current experience gently, he explained me what and how he proceeds at his work. 

Directly the designer visits the client at the place (apartment/maisonette/studio etc.) so he will start having a detailed survey and a clearer idea of how the place is. The survey includes; detailed dimensions and several photographs so that he will be able to gather all the information to be produced into a 2D drawing using the AutoCAD software.

His next step is to produce each room or area, both indoors or outdoors in 3D, which for this purpose, it is important that a detailed survey would be taken. Such as; ceiling heights, window heights, beams etc. Until then the areas would be in 3D and each room would be empty with wall paints, floor tiles etc.  

    Landscape design of an interior project

After proceeding the beginning steps, then he proceeds to the part where he needs to start designing its interiors.

For the scenario to be more realistic and appropriate as 3D models, from several different websites he downloads them in order to insert appliances, sofas, ornaments etc.

In the making he draws several sketches that will be produced in scale, so that the planning can be done realistic and proportioned as possible. This aids him to understand and apply changes at early stages before finalising.

    The Plan of the same interior project

After he completes the interior using the AutoCAD, then he exported the file to photoshop so he could manipulate the elements like; materials and lighting. That is how visualisation will be much more realistic and appealing to the eye of the client.

The artist provides several drawings to the client, such as; furniture dimensions and placings, soffits, beams, lights etc. Several furniture elevations are made for the clients to know what dimensions to look for when buying their furniture in order to achieve the most accurate/ similar finish or function. Regarding electrical work, the client will be given another drawing to know the electrical connections regarding air conditioners, wall lights, wall switches and sockets, internet and tv connections etc.

The software packages that he uses are; Autodesk AutoCAD and Relux. What he mostly uses to create and enhance details, such as mapping etc. is Adobe Photoshop. He believes that it is an asset in today’s design world, as it’s used in several stages of the design process.

 Regarding the quality of the actual final visualisation, the designer prefers using Autodesk 3Dsmax, as it’s far more detailed than the other software’s, but sometimes he will be needing to make use of easier and more time efficiency software’s in order for him to use the time wiser, as it takes so much detail that he has to present his work in 3D and 2D.

From his experience at work he learned that it’s not all about 3D and the visualisation but one should know how to present his drawings in detail for workers to be able to work from your drawings without having to question anything as the drawing will explain themselves easily.