City staff presents draft urban design guideline layouts; commissioners give direction on graphics, timeline

City staff presented a preliminary set of visual mockups for the city's urban design guidelines and asked the Urban Design Commission for feedback on layout, graphic style and process for producing a formal draft.

"What we are bringing before you this evening is a sampling of the next iteration of our attempt to start to put together your draft guidelines into a workable InDesign document," Jorge Rosalind, executive liaison to the commission, told commissioners. Rosalind said the materials shown are conceptual mockups, not a final draft, and staff seeks direction before producing a fuller layout.

Steven Cruz, a senior urban planner newly assigned to the project, walked commissioners through several page concepts that staff described as drawing inspiration from Los Angeles and New York City guideline publications. Cruz said the options range from photo-forward presentation to sketch- and diagram-driven pages that place graphics ahead of realistic imagery.

Commissioners generally endorsed a sketch-forward approach that preserves flexibility and…