How to use CRAP to make your city look great

I don't have a background in design but I did read the non-designer's guide to design and learned how using contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity makes stuff look nice. In this guide I will show you how to apply some of those techniques to make your Cims proud to live in a pretty town

Introduction

This is a shorter guide than my traffic guide, but hopefully you still find it helpful. You can find the original version with some older photos here.[imgur.com]

Feel free to ask any questions in the comments.

Contrast

Contrast means making different elements look different. Plainly put, things that are not the same should not look the same. In the example below, the curvy roads are 4 lane avenues and the straight roads are 6 lane or two lane. With the different streets having different lighting this creates a great contrast at night.


The chaos of nature always contrasts well with the order of cities, but you can contrast small with tall, dark with light, residential with commercial, and most importantly, contrast the unique from the usual.

Your city's landmark buildings are unique and you want them to stand out. Accent colors are colors that are used to emphasize a particular area or item in a picture or surrounding. A great way to make your landmarks pop is to use it's accent colors to make your landscaping decisions.

But you don't have to limit your color contrasting to landscaping.


Contrast generic and specialized industry with district specialization.


Use building themes or district styles to contrast residential from office, office from commercial.

Repetition

Repetition means reusing the same elements throughout your city.

Repetition

Repetition means reusing the same elements throughout your city.

Using Repetition

Repeating a pattern of zoning, or repeating a grid can create an order that is pleasing to the human eye, while at the same time, creating a colour base or pattern you can contrast with.

Alternating 1x1 plots of high density commercial with 1x1 office or low density commercial will create a contrasting repeating pattern.

Alignment

Alignment means there is an order to your design. A straight road connecting key landmarks is an obvious example.


To great effect


But you can align to natural curves


And now you can align with the sunrise and sunset.

Align with History

When in doubt of what to align with, I'll align with history.


Learn more about the evolution of residential street pattern here.[www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca]

Proximity

Proximity means that things are related with one another – or they are not. The closer things are, the more they are related. The farther things are away from one another, the less they are related. On a city wide scale we see this with tall buildings bunched together in a downtown.


On a smaller scale it means grouping buildings and assets by type.


Proximity can organize how you use repetition and contrast. Repeating patterns of accented trees and flowers divide the different parts, but also provide the effect of tying the parts together as a whole airport.


The dark red buildings are closest to each other, but closer to the light red buildings than the tall white buildings. Repeating the same buildings also creates a contrasting effect.

Conclusion

You can find more examples in my other city guides.

• A Behind the Scenes Guide to City Name Here[imgur.com]
  
• The Gambler's Guide to Punter County[imgur.com]
  
• The Souvenir Vendor's Guide to Darling[imgur.com]
  
• The Snowbirds Guide to Mangopolis[imgur.com]
  
• The Robot's Guide to GV6 [imgur.com]
  
• The Foodies Guide to Turtle Soup City[imgur.com]
  
• The Undergrad's Guide to Lagunaversity [imgur.com]
  
• The American Backpacker's Guide to Grand City[imgur.com]
  
• The Soccer Mom's Guide to Little Vlerks [imgur.com]
  
• The Realtor's Guide to Urbane[imgur.com]
  
• An Executive's Guide to Redemption City[imgur.com]

[cozy puppy]

instuctions unclear i ate a rat (why am i doing this on an acule guide XD)

[karal the crazy]

yeah i am with arkilum my citys are always to much of a grid

[Arkilum]

an interesting guide but completely in the wrong direction for me as I am trying to build my cities more messy and less rigid.

[femtas]

Repetition means reusing the same elements throughout your city.
Repetition means reusing the same elements throughout your city.

[PixelConglamorate (she/her)]

For those interested, this guide is largely based on the Gestalt principles which are the foundation for modern design and explore the relationships between elements of visuals. This guide does a good job quickly pointing out a lot of these, but it's absolutely worthwhile to spend some extra time learning about them if you're interested, it gives you much finer control over making things look the way you want to.

[AnarchistMetalhead]

great post, but i think there aren"t enough examples to show that repetition means reusing the same elements throughout your city.

[SoulSaviour]

Dude. Your shit is fucking tight.

[Sigvald The Magnificent]

oh!

[Mossman180]

I feel inspired.

[Violetstorm]

This looks amazing and all... but I honsetly have no idea how to even begin to build into any of these end-game cities. Where do I begin, what's most important, where are all the penguins, I have so many questions!