magazines

Riding a Wave
'If you've been paying any attention to the media lately,' wrote Brian Van Bower at the start of his Aqua Culture column in WaterShapes' November 2006 edition, 'you may have noticed that watershaping is "in" as a big-time topic for television, books, magazines, newspapers and other forms of mass communication.'   'Never in all my years as part of this industry can I recall a time during which the subject of
2015/3.1, March 4 — Hot Water Comforts, Digital Dynamics, Efficient Lighting and more
THE ESSENTIAL E-NEWSLETTER FOR WATERSHAPE DESIGNERS, ENGINEERS AND BUILDERS March 4, 2015 www.watershapes.com DIGITAL DESIGN…
Premium Pages
If you’re like me, you look forward to the arrival of every issue of this magazine. As I see it, WaterShapes provides information that helps me become better at what I do.  It’s also fun to read, informative and wonderfully affirming in that it shows our industry at its very best.  It’s truly an indispensible resource, has been responsible for a good measure of the progress the industry has made in the past 12 years – and, unfortunately, it’s also struggling to make headway in a tough marketplace. Let me say this up front:  I’m going to lay it on the line about
Economy of Motion
As is true of businesses coast to coast, we at WaterShapes are counting the days until the economy turns around.  We do so confident that economic trends are cyclical and that good times have always replaced the bad. But this particular recession has been deeper and longer than most among us have ever witnessed, leaving many companies – including ours – to hunker down and make what we can out of thin stocks of available business.  As has been suggested numerous times in the pages of our magazine, however, this is no time for rash
Change From Within
So much has been written and said about our current economic situation that it can get pretty depressing.  One thing I hear and read over and over is that “Many people are just stuck, waiting and hoping for things to change.”   I can’t help noticing that, for lots of people in government and major industries as well as in small businesses and sole proprietorships, this approach means doing the exact same things they were doing when their days were fat with opportunities.  Personally, I think that’s crazy! I believe if I want my situation to change, good times or bad, I must change myself from within and can’t afford to wait for external forces to push me toward prosperity – especially not these days, when nobody really knows what’s
Riding a Wave
If you've been paying any attention to the media lately, you may have noticed that watershaping is "in" as a big-time topic for television, books, magazines, newspapers and other forms of mass communication.   Never in all my years as part of this industry can I recall a time during which the subject of beautiful custom pools, spas, fountains, ponds, streams and interactive bodies of water has won so much attention.  It seems as if our society has finally caught on to the power, beauty and excitement of the art form many of us
Staying Current
With a busy schedule, it's too easy to use the same tools repeatedly in project designs.   Yes, you can mitigate the repetition to a certain extent by using those tools differently each time, but the fact remains that many of us tend to design over and over again with the same plants, hardscape materials and structural approaches because it's what we know and trust.   But let's face it:  Most clients don't want exactly what someone else has; instead, they want one element from this garden and a special plant from that one.   From a design perspective, selecting new plants every time is
Periodic Resources
As a reader of WaterShapes, it's likely you appreciate the valuable information published by quality magazines.  I certainly do, so in addition to the steady diet of books I read to keep up on technical and design issues as well as business approaches and philosophies, I also turn to a handful of periodicals for the helpful and inspiring information they have to offer. For one thing, I find that these magazines fill gaps I perceive in my own background.  For another - and even though some of the ones I read run far afield of the industry-specific information I value in trade magazines - I'm uniquely surprised by