Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 2007 - 57

book

reviews
Arnold Wengrow

editor

Developing and Maintaining a Design-Tech Portfolio
A Guide for Theatre, Film and TV
By Rafael Jaen; Boston, Focal Press, 2006.
185pp., ill. (chieﬂy col.) ISBN 9780240807126,
paper, $34.99.
Reviewed by William Kenyon
After years of teaching about portfolio construction, I know there are as many opinions
about theatrical portfolios as there are designers and technicians. Finally, a book has
come to market that tries to address the many
challenges of developing a design and technical portfolio. On the whole, Rafael Jaen's
Developing and Maintaining a Design-Tech
Portfolio covers many of the topics and suggestions that designers and professors have
been passing on for decades. But it falls far
short of addressing the breadth of concerns
facing a young designer or technician getting
ready to hit the job market. I tell students who
are creating their first portfolio that there is
no way possible to create a portfolio that will
please every potential employer. You have to
make a clear choice and commit to it fully,
much like creating a successful design.
There are many specific pointers offered
throughout that I heartily agree with and a
few I would respectfully disagree with.
There are several things, however, that
concern me if I were to suggest this book to
a young designer. I find the structure of the
book and its chapters confusing. The graphics are problematic and work against the
ideas presented. In addition, the content and
ideas need to be reorganized to make them
more accessible. Lastly, the book needs to
address the concerns of all the areas and
sub-specialties found in theatre, film, and TV
(as it purports to do in the title), rather than
spending most of its time on costume and
scenic design for theatre.
The book appears to be structured as a
workbook meant to be used and written in as
the designer proceeds to create a portfolio.
There are some checklists and evaluations

THEATRE

DESIGN

scattered throughout to help organize one's
thoughts, but their location is not indicated
in the table of contents, requiring one to hunt
through the book to find them. I expect that
if a young designer were to buy this book, it
would be used as a reference and kept for years. Given this, it would help if it were easy to
find and refer back to certain sections quikkly. Also, I would have liked to have seen the
publisher choose a more durable cover binding, as the current binding is a bit thin for a
book that should see significant use.
The table of contents would have benefitted from a great deal more information
about the contents of each chapter. There is
no list of illustrations, requiring the reader to
flip back and forth repeatedly to find specific items while building his or her portfolio.
There are several chapters which are only
one page long, while others are quite lengthy,
covering multiple topics. This contributes to
the difficulty I have in following the author's
train of thought.
The organization of the material within
the convoluted chapter structure is also quite
confusing. For example, discussions of the physical case and layout of pages used to present a
portfolio are partially discussed in Chapters 2,
9, and 13. It would have been more effective to
group these discussions together.
Throughout the book, the author uses
many photos and illustrations to reinforce
his points. This gives young designers a visu-

al reference to help them begin their work.
My biggest concern with this book, however,
is with the quality and presentation of these
images. In many cases the pictures are poorly
reproduced, making it difﬁcult to understand
the ideas presented. Quite often the pictures
are low quality, poorly framed and composed,
poorly lit or are even turned sideways on the
page. These are all things that most of us caution against when discussing the look of a portfolio with our students! The layout of the book
quite frequently places the illustrations a page
or more away from the text describing the idea,
again detracting from the clarity of the author's
suggestions. In a book about the look of a presentation, I would have liked much more effort
behind the illustrations and photographs.
The author has sought out many other
contributions from designers and technicians,
both professional and collegiate. It is very valuable to the overall message of the book for
young designers and technicians to hear from
multiple voices and to see examples from
portfolios beyond that of the author. Further
investigation into all the other areas of design
and technology would be very useful here, however. There are too many contributions from
students of the author, rather than from timetested and successful professionals. It may be
valid for students to see what other students
are doing, but if the point here is to help people get a job, be it a grad school assistantship
or their ﬁrst Off-Broadway gig, we need to hear
from more people who have already successfully used their portfolio to do just that.
Because of problems with its structure
and content and especially my concerns with
the quality of the graphics and illustrations, I
hesitate to recommend this book to a young
designer or technician.
William Kenyon is a USITT
Co-Commissioner for Education. A
member of USA Local 829 in lighting
and sound designer, he heads the B.F.A.
program in design and technology at Penn
State University.
Copyright 2007 United States Institute for Theatre Technology, Inc.

TECHNOLOGY
WINTER

2007

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