Technical Drawings: What you need to know and why

Considering a store fit-out or re-designing your physical environment? Without professional Detailed Development Drawings, your re-fit could be at risk.

Detailed Development Drawings ensure the accurate translation of your store design into the physical environment. Here’s what you need to know about technical drawings and why?

As creative designers, we love nothing more than losing ourselves in a juicy creative design brief. From exploring brands and audiences to developing mood boards, ideas, and sketches, the creative process is often inspiring and enjoyable for everyone involved. And, for most clients, it can the most exciting part of the project as they get to visualize, for the first time, how we’ve interpreted their brief into a physical environment or store concept.

But this stage of the project is purely conceptual. Without Detailed Development Drawings, the realization and accurate translation of the store concept could be in real danger, putting your re-fit project at risk.

So, if you’re embarking on a re-fit or re-design, here’s what you need to know about Detailed Development Drawings…

What are Detailed Development Drawings, and why are they so important?

Once a creative concept design has been signed off, the only way this can be accurately and successfully delivered into the physical environment is by the creation of Detailed Development Drawings.

Detailed Drawing Packs include design intent documents, elevation plans, and floor plans, along with plumbing and electrical and technical drawings.

At Retail Experience Design, our end-to-end design expertise means we have the technical ability to create industry-standard technical drawing packs, whilst also pushing creative boundaries to ensure the physical space works to the optimum level for our clients.

The role of detailed development drawings is multifaceted

As well as being the crucial element in ensuring the successful delivery of the store fit-out or physical environment. Detailed Development Drawings have more than one job – they also ensure:

Competitive costing – Detailed Development Drawings are used to tender projects, often to several contractors. They ensure accurate and fixed project costs are submitted before implementation or project kick-off. They also ensure clarification of the process for the project; most competitive costings as well provide an estimate of a completion date. Retail Experience Design has helped businesses make significant savings on overall build costs through the tender process.
Specification and instructions – The Detailed Development Drawings provide contractors and all trades involved with essential and clear guidance as well as a sound specification to accurately build and implement, ultimately avoiding misinterpretation. What’s more brand consistency will be ensured with the technical drawings.
Planning – Detailed Development Drawings are part of the documentation of a formal planning application and help the planning officer to decide on the suitability of a proposed building or changes. Whereas a creative concept can be open to interpretation, technical drawings must be unambiguous as legal documents.
Safety – Detailed Development Drawings include the specifications required to ensure safety regulations are met.
Landlord Approval – In the process of securing a new unit, Landlords or centre managers often request a Landlord Pack. This enables them to visualize the proposed store and can help secure the unit.

3d visualization

Retail Experience Design can visualize, quickly understand and recognize how to further develop and enhance existing retail brands, allowing us to advise on design and scheme layout solutions for new spaces.

To help clients visualize our designs, we create meticulous 3D renders. These allow clients to see how their store or physical environments will look before construction work begins. These visualizations represent everything about the finished space from lighting to materials to colour and furniture. However, 3D renders shouldn’t substitute detailed drawings – they’re simply a way in which we bring our concepts to life during the creative process.

John Bell & Croydon

A great example of where Retail Experience Design was appointed for their technical expertise in creating Detailed Development Drawings was for a £4million refurbishment for McKesson (formally Lloyds Pharmacy).