Using illustration to educate building owners in seismic zones

During this four-month long project, I worked closely with Andrew Charleson, an architect and professor based in New Zealand, to produce dozens of technical illustrations. These illustrations are part of one of Professor Charleson's many publications on the intersections of architecture and seismic engineering. This one is titled "Earthquake-safe buildings" and it is a series of articles for developing nations about improving the earthquake safety of buildings. It has been published in the World Housing Encyclopedia (WHE) and translated into dozens of languages.

01 Meet the author and read the manuscript.

Although I study earthquake engineering at the graduate level, preparing illustrations for the layperson requires a different mindset. After reading the manuscript closely, I worked with Professor Charleson to determine a direction for simplifying complex diagrams, photos, and concepts. Some diagrams just needed to be cleaned up with better lineweights, and others needed to be reworked completed to be legible for a non-expert audience.

02 Set up libraries in Illustrator and AutoCAD.

In order to streamline the process, I worked with Professor Charleson to select the reusable components that would be used throughout the project. Then, I created libraries

1. Color
2. Lineweight
3. Hatching
4. Perspective

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03 Consider internationalization and various viewing modes.

When we began the project, I knew that its intended audience would be non-engineers in seismically active regions all around the world. This presented three considerations.

• The illustrations had to work for both web and print, and in both color and black and white.
• The illustrations should be easy for translators to access and add to.
• The illustrations needed to work with RTL language systems, like Farsi.

04 Consider engineering.

To successfully convey complex concepts, an in-depth knowledge of the material came in handy. I worked closely with Professor Charleson to ensure the drawings straddled the line between technically accurate yet communicative to a non-engineering audience. This meant, in some cases, omitting detail for the sake of clarity.

This project was a blast. Not only did I learn more about my chosen discipline of earthquake engineering, I also picked up new tips and tricks in Illustrator and AutoCAD. I look forward to working on science communication projects again in the future.