After accepting my role as Costume Designer for The Threepenny Opera , I could not have imagined the amount of work that would have to be done before even meeting the director. Because of communication problems over the summer, I was not able to contact the director and get a starting ground as to where the director was envisioning. Because of this, my summer led to researching for three different time periods.
Thinking my research was only for me, little did I know that I would need my research images to communicate to the shop, not just my renderings. Maybe that was silly of me, but I honestly didn’t think twice about it. After starting costume fittings, it was easier to show research images along with my renderings to better help communicate my ideas to the shop.
One set of my renderings now includes research images on the same page as the rendering along with notes. This method worked great because when I was not in the shop I was able to leave my ideas with the shop manager and my assistant to pull things for me to look at.
Research is the key to design and communication!