One word back
Stills, walkthrough, or aerial — not three qualities of the same render. Three different questions, and one word tells us which one is yours.
Most practices never get asked which format they actually need — because answering would mean explaining the scheme first, and that's a paragraph nobody has time to write back. So the format defaults to whatever's on hand, and the question that would have settled the room fastest never gets asked at all.
The fix isn't a better explanation. It's a shorter one — down to a single word, because the three words below already mean something specific.
What each format actually settles
Not a ranking — a walkthrough isn't a fancier still, and an aerial isn't a wider one. Each answers a question the other two can't touch.
Stills
Settles one decided condition.
A fixed frame, nothing moving — the fastest way to get a room to agree or disagree about exactly one thing: does this material read right at this proportion, against this base. Reach for it when the question in front of you is singular and already decided in every way but one.
Walkthrough
Settles an experience over a sequence.
A staircase, an open-plan run from living room to kitchen to dining table — the moment a question is about what it feels like to move through a space rather than look at it once, a still runs out of runway however carefully it is framed. What a sequence has to carry starts with a frame like this one: everything a walkthrough would pass through, held still long enough to plan the path.
Aerial
Settles how a scheme sits in its site.
Neither a still of one elevation nor a walkthrough of one interior can answer a site question — massing against neighbours, a tower pair read against the existing skyline, the whole plan legible at once. That is a third and genuinely different job, not a wider version of a still.
Which word to send back
Read down the left column until one sounds like your actual desk right now.
- The board is deciding one material, proportion or roofline Stills. A fixed frame gives everyone the same thing to agree or disagree about.
- The client is asking what it feels like to actually move through the space Walkthrough. No still, however wide, carries a question about sequence.
- The debate is about a scheme against its neighbours, or the whole plan at once Aerial. The only format that reads a whole site in one frame.
The right format isn't the better one. It's the one that answers your question.
So instead of a general pitch — one word back. Stills, walkthrough, or aerial: which does your next submission actually need? We'll send the matching frame, not a generic sample. And if the honest answer is "I'm not sure yet," the fuller argument for each is one page over, at stills or a walkthrough.
