Putting together a costume design portfolio for college visits?

I will be entering college in a year and am planning to study technical theater, specifically costume design. Many of the colleges I will be applying to have theater scholarships for both actors and techies, but they require an interview and a portfolio. I have a general idea of what to put into my portfolio - sketches, pictures, swatches of fabrics- and I have a lot of stuff that I could include, but I just don't know HOW to put it together. For example, what kind of binder or notebook should I buy? Should I glue the pictures to cardstock, or is there a better way to attach things that would let me update easily? Should I include lots of in-progress pictures or just the finished products? If I didn't sketch the costume before I made it, what do I do? How long should it be? Should I include blurbs about the design inspiration? Is it all right if I didn't take the photos myself? I have a ton of questions and any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you!

smartsassysabrina2007-07-30T16:12:07Z

Favorite Answer

When putting together your portfolio it's best to do it so that all your work on a single costume is together, probably in sequence, so sketches and blurbs (short blurbs, 50 words or less), the swatches, then the finished photos. Use good quality scrapbooking type materials to glue your materials to the papers and put the sheets in protective plastic rather than hole punching it, so you can remove and replace as needed. It's fine if you didn't take the photo yourself, but if you didn't you need to put a caption on it "Photo by Name, Date". Use the most recent stuff, and don't make it too long, probably 10 pages or less.