KAA Design Group: Under One Roof
Once the basic details have been worked out, the value boards become concept books, which detail the range of colors and textures, moods and light of the proposed designs. These are presented to the client as the first step toward helping them achieve their design goals. “We get selected by the quality of our concept books,” observes Homesley.
It is indicative of the inclusive nature of KAA that a project starts when the client receives a concept book, and concludes with the gift of a photo book, created with iPhoto. “iPhoto has been huge for us,” Kirkpatrick says. “I can take a group of photos, make a catalog, and order online. Three days later, a book shows up. The books are so clean, so beautiful, and the clients love them.”
The beauty of what they do
The amount and variety of design work that goes on at KAA’s studios is staggering, as is their commitment to detail. “We do everything from brand identity to the design of a ribbon on a holiday gift box,” says Melanie Robinson in their Graphic studio. “Anything that can be designed-that’s the beauty of what we do.”
Robinson relies on a 30-inch cinema display to share her work. “All our clients are visual in nature,” she said. “So the package is important. It makes a difference that our tools are beautifully designed. The cinema display is clean, the screen is crisp, and it is elegant.” Homesley has opted for a Mac mini and a 23-inch flat panel display. “The mini looks like a piece of sculpture,” she says. And in a studio where desk space is at a premium, the small size of the Mac mini is a definite plus.
When construction costs are budgeted at $1,000 a square foot, our clients won’t settle for anything less than getting it right.
Meanwhile, over in the landscape studio, Jennifer Bowe is hard at work on a project to transform 1000 acres in Utah into a hunting lodge and family retreat. To visualize their design, the team has created panoramic mockups in Photoshop. KAA maintains an extensive database of reference images, including 2200 photographs of plants and 1500 design images saved in an Extensis portfolio housed on two identical servers.
Like Kirkpatrick, Bowe prefers PowerCADD for their easy-to-use drawing tools. “Plus PowerCADD is more user-friendly. Everything is to scale. It’s exact. PowerCADD gives you a good sense of how things will really work out when you lay it down on the landscape.” The simple translation of PowerCADD drawings into Photoshop or Illustrator means it’s easy to create customer presentations or to keep the colleagues in other areas of KAA informed every step of the way.
Cue the flames
Sometimes customer presentations can be a work of art in themselves. At the groundbreaking ceremony on a 30,000 square foot home near Monterey, California, Kirkpatrick turned his 17-inch PowerBook G4 into a movie screen. “I opened my PowerBook and played a fly-through animation of what the estate would look like a year from now.”
Created by Manolo Langis, KAA’s resident motion graphic designer, the fly-through was composited and edited using Motion and authored onto a DVD with DVD Studio Pro. Textures, photography, and a little Photoshop magic were manipulated on the Mac and transferred into 3D Studio Max for rendering. The result was a Hollywood-worthy, realistic visual experience, complete with rippling water in the fountain and flames dancing in the outdoor fireplace.
“We were able to communicate our vision and show what the house would look like in the landscape,” Kirkpatrick says. “It was an amazing experience to stand on the site and show our clients what the building would look like.” At the end of the presentation, the crowd cheered.
Dream big, aim high
Helping their clients turn dreams into reality is what KAA is all about. Luckily, they also excel at it. “We work with sophisticated, demanding clients who bring in teams of lawyers and consultants,” Kirkpatrick says. “When construction costs are budgeted at $1,000 a square foot, our clients won’t settle for anything less than getting it right.” He and his team fully understand the responsibility of achieving that harmony between the possible and the impossible, of creating a home that is part sanctuary, part celebration, of delivering a garden that gives the illusion that it has always grown exactly in that one spot. It’s a delicate balance, but KAA has the team, and the tools, to deliver.
