Tinybuildings. 'elements of style'

When I first started making these tinybuildings, being the anal-retentive designer that I am, I instituted some 'design guidelines' for myself. The guidelines are based upon a sense that the proportions of the business cards or the graphics on the packaging or some ethereal 'perfection' drive the size and shape of the completed tinybuilding. They are not arbitrary sizes and shapes, but inevitable little icons.

It might be that the text on the front of a restaurant's business card reminds me of a sign, like on the Bi-rite Creamery; then, I look at the remainder of the card to see how I might replicate the same proportions of the actual building with the logo ending up at the top/center of the structure.

Whenever possible, I use just one card per building. In some cases that just isn't possible - either because the finished structure wants to be bigger [like the Tartine] or because the actual configuration and proportions of the original building just cannot be replicated with one card.

Packaging gives me more options, but I still try to use just one corner of a box, or one side; although like in the case of the Carr's Cracker house, I deliberately used the illustration of a single cracker to make the roof. Funnily, this roof shape makes me think of a cabana on some Caribbean island - I can see it made from palm fronds....

I *must* say, I just love the SKU lines and the Nutrition listings on packaging. They are so dynamic and so remind me of architectural finishes like siding or stone. Wonderful graphics!

I search the text and graphics and color-fields on original cards and packaging to decide where to place windows and openings - cutting along imagined lines at intervals determined by the graphic designer's sense of proportion determines if the windows should be casement with mullions or vertical slits or French doors, or *picture windows*. I have noticed that I generally default to more 'romantic' architectural styles if I am not making a *real* building, but rather creating an appropriate impression or style.

There are exceptions to this though. For instance, the 'Glass' building; and the 'Blowfish' building just *had* to be Modern. Their cards graphics were just too bold and high-contrast to become quaint cottages or shops. In fact, the 'Glass' modern house is made from a hangtag from a bottle of Monetto Prosecco: so there is a tiny/little joke here about living in glass houses. And, the 'Blowfish' building is made from the business card from a *wild* sushi restaurant in San Francisco. The night we ate there, we sat at the sushi bar; and the overall impression I left with was one of 'disco sushi'. I vaguely remember bright flashing lights, reflections in mirrors, colored-glass pendant fixtures, stained concrete floors, etc. The actual space may be nothing like this - but that's what I envisioned when I sat down with the 'Blowfish' card and began to cut and shape the final tinybuilding.

One rule is to try to make the structures out of continuous strips of cardstock. Following this rule tends to result in the smallest buildings- there are only so many inches in a business card. So, instead of cutting and joining at each corner, I try to start at what is going to be one corner of the final tinybuilding, then kerf the cardstock to fold it at subsequent corners; eventually joining the ends at the fourth corner. I have to constantly remind myself to allow for the taller, triangular shape of the gables, so I don't have to patch a piece onto the ends. I *hate* having to do that, and usually destroy those attempts.

There are other rules and guidelines, but they are all subject to being overridden by some *flash* of inspiration. When I hold a card or a flattened package in my hand, ready to start cutting, I can *feel* just what I'm supposed to do first, and second, and third....

As I sit down to make a tinybuilding, I feel a delicious sense of opportunity and inevitability. There are so many possibilities, but just one *perfect* tinybuilding waiting in the colors and letters and proportions of the card or packaging. The challenge is to cut and fold and paste and form the flat cardstock into a three-dimensional replica of four-dimensional memory - of an occurrence, an event, a good time and place and people.