Show Case: Developing, Maintaining, and Presenting a Design-Tech Portfolio for Theatre and Allied Fields

I have taught technical theatre apprentices for years with only a few donated portfolios to use for a guide for my charges. I found the first edition very helpful, and this one is even more wonderful to work from. It is the first time I have been able to find a book of this nature. Great information and suggestions. Downsides include links to websites that are no longer active, and a lot of time spent on the author's favorite printer, which will be quickly replaced and forgotten as the world of printers go. As a result, another update will be coming. College students and their professors tire of parades of books being replaced by new editions every few years, so perhaps authors may strike a compromise and have the changeable web content available on a website that can morph as time goes by, with some of the print content in physical form. I work both with the physical text and the eprint edition, and have not determined which I like the best, but as I teach out of multiple texts, the ease of having them all in my iPad is wonderful.

This is great for any design tech major looking for a great way to build their portfolio.

Invaluable book! Excellent resource for both students and working professionals. The color pictures are exceptional quality. A very good price too.

Great book! Really helped me get my portfolio together!

In the creative fields, if you don't have a good portfolio, you don't stand a chance, especially with this depressed economy. Job competition is even fiercer and you really need to make a powerful first impression with your portfolio. Speaking as someone who has been on both sides of the job process, I can say for sure that a memorable portfolio means the difference between getting hired and being skipped over. I've seen portfolios from designers that have clearly been meticulously crafted with a lot of love and attention, and I've seen embarrassing ones that are a textbook example of what not to do.What this book is great at is giving you ideas for how to create hardcopy portfolios for stage, costume and fashion design, etc, and this can be extended to other related industries like product design, web, and film. This book will not only give you some terrific ideas for layouts and designs, but also Do's and Don'ts on each section and type of portfolio. The book also covers creating CV's, resumes, business cards, CD demo reels, presentation and interviewing tips. Nowadays, many employers ask for online or digital portfolios to evaluate candidates before inviting them in for a face-to-face interview. Being in IT, I felt the digital portfolio section was the weakest, especially recommending Powerpoint for slideshows over better alternatives like Apple's Keynote. (Keynote is what we used at MTV for high-profile company events and presentations). Most designers use Macs so this isn't an issue.The section on creating web portfolios lacks enough detail and technical how-tos for anyone not familiar with HTML to be able to create one. It also does not mention important portfolio sites like Coroflot where a lot of designers have their work hosted, requiring no technical expertise. For someone new to website building, advice on registering a domain name and finding a hosting provider will sound daunting.Overall, a very solid book on how to create portfolios and get yourself noticed and marketing yourself. The construction of the book itself is very good, with heavy glossy pages and an attractive front cover with embossed letters.

It is always a good idea that if you are in the arts to have a good, tight and well presented portfolio. As a film production student, I was really looking forward to finding a book that could help me organize ways to show my skills own skills in editing and cinematography. I was expecting a book that would give me good ideas as far as putting together a portfolio of work to show others. Naturally, with the quality and depth of the majority of Focal Press' offerings, particularly since some are used as textbooks in my classes, I assumed that this book would be just what I needed.Unfortunately, I was left rather disappointed.While Rafael Jaen's book, "Showcase," is very beautifully photographed, well organized and gives great ideas for putting together a portfolio, the emphasis of the book's focus is geared toward those within the theater - particularly costume and set design. There is also a great section on Design-Tech resume's, CV's, Business Cards and Stationery along with Do's and Don'ts for these and the portfolio. It does have some useful pointers, but in the film industry or as a cinema arts student, it really was not as helpful as I had hoped.

Buying this book I hoped to find some new knowledge about how to plan, create and update a paper portfolio and a digital one. Everything which is written in this book is either a banality or not up to date anymore (or both!). There are plenty of repetitions of totally redundant suggestions e.g. that a portfolio should have a beginning, a middle and an end or about wearing clean clothes and having clean hands for an interview.The portfolio examples are unfortunately not particularly inspiring, even if many of them are from acclaimed artists.There are beautiful drawings and photos in the book, but it is very unrealistic that someone can learn something from the text.Half of the content are just short biographies of who has been interviewed and how many awards he has won. The rest are "words of wisdom" that sadly are far from illuminating.What I learned from this book is that once you are an acclaimed and famous artist, you don't need anymore to care about your portfolio, and also that being a great designer doesn't mean that you are able to write a book!