Over the years, Randal Birkey has created hundreds of line art drawings in pen and ink style using actual pen and ink in the early days, then graduating to digital pen and ink using software such as Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and Corel (Fractal) Painter. These are just some of the many line illustrations done over his illustration career.

Commercial Jet Airliner	Camera
Business Woman	Concert Tickets
Dice	Grocery Shopping Cart
Sunglasses	Travel Luggage

Cushing Academy is a private coeducational secondary school founded in 1865, and located in Ashburnham, MA. They have partnered with a design firm called Corey, McPherson, Nash to redesign their viewbook. Through a web based search, CMN contacted Randal Birkey Illustration and contracted for a new Campus Map to be produced both for the school viewbook and their website.

Randal worked from maps, photos and other references provided by CMN and Cushing Academy. The first stage in the illustration process was to produce a line art “pencil” of the aerial perspective view that best displayed the campus. This line art was done in sepia tones using Corel Painter at a size of  6450 x 3750 pixels.

Cushing Campus Aerial Perspective Campus Map - Pencil

Once this “pencil” was reviewed and approved by the design firm and the client, Randal then added digital watercolor to a layer below the line art using Corel Painter. The final file was converted to Adobe Photoshop and delivered as a layered Photoshop file with line art on one layer, and color washes and texture on the background layer.

Cushing Academy Aerial Perspective Campus Map - Color

In this stylized version, the forested areas around the school campus were left white or blank in order to allow the buildings, streets and other fields to have visual prominence. The design firm will add all the labels and key to the site during the print production process.

Randal was contacted through his new web design firm by Shands Healthcare in Gainsville, Florida. This organization is affiliated with the University of Florida, and located near its medical research facility. Shands has recently completed the construction of a new cancer hospital and needed to add some new floor plans and campus map illustrations to their existing website at www.shands.org.

Randal and Taylor Birkey worked from engineering drawings and references supplied by the hospital to create a series of floor plans and a campus map illustration using Adobe Illustrator software on Apple Macintosh computers.

Shands Healthcare Campus Map

Shands Healthcare - Floor Plan 1

Shands Healthcare - Floor Plan 3

The illustrations will be used for both print and web applications.

The Home Depot Foundation has completed the updated Sustainable Cities Institute website which I wrote about in a previous post, and can now be found online here.

Randal Birkey created the base map illustration that the interactive Flash application is structured around.

Sustainable Cities Map - illustration by Randal Birkey

Randal also created the site plan for the City Hall section of the application.

Sustainable City - City Hall Floor Plan - Randal Birkey Illustration

Finally, he created the view of how transportation could be integrated in more sustainable and environmentally friendly ways by city and urban planners.

Sustainable City Transportation - Randal Birkey Illustration

San Francisco CityFlash Street Map

This is a detail section of a San Francisco Street Map that Randal Birkey produced for Rand McNally/Hallwag in 1989 as part of their CityFlash Map product line. This was the first Rand McNally map product produced on desktop computers. Randal and his team used Apple Macintosh FX, CX and CI computers running Adobe Illustrator and Aldus Freehand software.

The street map portion of each CityFlash Map included street level details such as street names, locations of post offices, hospitals, banks, theaters, pharmacies and illustrated points of interest. Also included were vicinity maps, shopping center maps, public transportation system maps, all in an easy-to-use, two-sided folded format.

Other cities produced were Chicago, New York, Washington D.C. and Boston.

Chicago CityFlash Street Map

This Street Map of Chicago was produced by Randal Birkey and his team as a part of an entire new map product line for Rand McNally in 1989. This was the first product line offered by a partnership of Rand McNally and Hallwag, called CityFlash Maps, produced completely digitally on desktop computers comprised of Apple Macintosh FX and CX computers running then current versions of Aldus Freehand and Adobe Illustrator.

The software used produced vector Postscript files which were supplied to the printer, converted to 4-color process film (CMYK) and plates, then used for 4-color offset printing.

5 US cities were completed as a part of the CityFlash product project:

• Chicago
• New York
• Boston
• San Fransisco
• Washington, D.C.

For each city map product, the team produced a range of maps including: street level detail maps including points of interest like this one, public transportation maps, and shopping district maps.

Boston Vicinity CityFlash Map for Rand McNally

Randal Birkey created this Boston Vicinity Map as a part of an entire new map product line for Rand McNally in 1989. This product series called CityFlash Maps was the first product line offered by Rand McNally and European partner Hallwag, produced completely digitally on desktop computers. Randal and his team used Apple Macintosh FX and CX computers running then current versions of Aldus Freehand and Adobe Illustrator.

The digital vector Postscript files were supplied to Rand McNally’s printer, and converted to 4-color process film (CMYK) and plates, then used for 4-color offset printing.

For each city, Randal and his team produced additional maps including street level detail maps including points of interest, public transportation maps, and shopping area maps.

5 US cities were completed as a part of the CityFlash product project: Chicago, New York, Boston, San Fransisco and Washington, D.C.

Randal created this illustration for VSA Partners, to appear in an annual report for their client, the Michigan Avenue National Bank, located in Chicago, Illinois. It must have been sometime in the 1980’s. The original art was pen and ink line work, with watercolor and color pencil washes on illustration board.

Michigan Avenue National Bank - Aerial Map

Randal Birkey was commissioned to produce a series of architectural illustrations of the renovation project of “Symphony Center,” the home of the world renowned Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Orchestra Hall, as it is also known, was undergoing an extensive renovation, as well as being connected to another building around the corner from Michigan Avenue. Together, this new combined complex was to be called “Symphony Center,” and would house not only the auditorium, but also all the practice rooms, backstage production and staging areas, and the headquarter offices for the organization.

This illustration was produced by Randal working from the architectural blueprints, in a Mac based 3D perspective wireframe application. Once the view and level of line detail was reached, the line work was transferred to a 2D drawing program called Fractal Painter.

In the Painter software, all the watercolor and color pencil texturing was added. A Wacom tablet was required for the kind of control needed for the digital “brushes.” The application and tablet ran on an Apple Macintosh computer.

Additional illustrations were completed including: a cutaway elevation, lobby view, floor plan, and auditorium views. These illustrations were all used in a high-end printed piece that went to CSO supporters to communicate the renovation project details, and also as a fund-raising tool.

Chicago Symphony Orchestra Hall - Symphony Center

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Arlington Park Race Track - exploded view isometric diagram

The Arlington Park Racetrack experienced a major fire in 1985 that destroyed most of the main grandstand and clubhouse building. A new building was designed and constructed in 1989, and the ad agency was hired to produce new map and floor plan handouts for racetrack patrons to use in navigating the campus.

Randal Birkey was contracted by Dimeo, Rosen & Partners to produce an “exploded view” diagram of the new grandstand building, showing what was on each floor and locating major exits, restrooms, etc.

Randal worked from technical architectural blueprint scale drawings to create an isometric diagram in Adobe Illustrator.

Arlington Million - Race Logo

Randal also recreated and cleaned up the Arlington Million race logo in Adobe Photoshop for the same ad agency.

Contact Randal Birkey for all your cutaway and exploded view architectural illustration needs.