[Commlist] Conference: Designs on television

*DESIGNS ON TELEVISION: PRODUCTION DESIGN AND TELEVISION AESTHETICS *

**

18-19 April 2024, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, LONDON 
NW1 5LS (opposite Baker St Tube station), in Chiltern Hall.**

**

*OVERVIEW *

Design is a key element of all sorts of television, but frequently 
neglected in academic studies. In 2003, Piers D. Britton and Simon J. 
Barker wrote ‘No serious, sustained examination of the role of scenic or 
costume design in the medium has been attempted’ (p.1). Almost 20 years 
later, Britton wrote ‘Scholarly analysis of almost any form of design 
for the screen… is still a relatively new phenomenon’ (2021: 10). This 
conference seeks to examine various aspects of television design, 
including set design, set dressing, redressing locations, connections 
between real space and onscreen place, relationships between set design 
and costume design, and the interpersonal relationships and 
institutional structures which inform design for television.

Early critical orthodoxies around television have assumed it is a medium 
lacking in any distinctive visual aesthetic. However, more recent work 
by scholars such as Steven Peacock, Brett Mills and Helen Wheatley has 
drawn attention to television’s aesthetic. As Wheatley (2016) argues, 
television has always been visual and has always been spectacular. This 
conference therefore aims to draw attention to the visual and aesthetic 
qualities of television design.

There will be input from industry practitioners to discuss their 
experience of television design. In addition, in collaboration with the 
University of Brighton Design Archives, which holds the papers of the 
pioneering television designer Natasha Kroll (1914-2004) among others, 
there will be an accompanying exhibition of documents and artefacts 
related to television design.

*REGISTER HERE:*

https://store.westminster.ac.uk/product-catalogue/media-arts-and-design/designs-on-tv-conference-registration-platform/designs-on-tv-conference-registration-platform 
<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/store.westminster.ac.uk/product-catalogue/media-arts-and-design/designs-on-tv-conference-registration-platform/designs-on-tv-conference-registration-platform__;!!IWcW7C1FDU-5!Z1DBzJkeICH7kyVdVLgxUF1FOQJ_YWaU39k6b-V2RQXIEqKrxAt7Kobi4lFeP9e2gXIa2nDb6p6dZslcMmu_NJLrfw8ztvw$>

**

**

*ORGANISERS *

Dr Christopher Hogg –(C.Hogg /at/ westminster.ac.uk) 
<mailto:(C.Hogg /at/ westminster.ac.uk)> (University of Westminster)

Dr Douglas McNaughton –(D.Mcnaughton /at/ brighton.ac.uk) 
<mailto:(D.Mcnaughton /at/ brighton.ac.uk)> (University of Brighton)



*LIST OF PRESENTATIONS ACCEPTED*

Rooms within Rooms within Rooms: Designing the Television Afterlife

Helen Wheatley

The Beginnings of Scenic Design on British Television, 1928-1939

John Wyver

The Designer’s Story – a model for the analysis and appreciation of 
screen design

Jane Barnwell

**

Upstairs Downton: The Class Boundary When Filming in Stately Homes

Rosemary Alexander-Jones

Layers of ‘lost’ New York: Production design and period drama’s spatial 
imaginary

Faye Woods

‘How to produce by a false thing the effects of a true’: asyndetic 
spaces in /The Mayor of Casterbridge/(1978/2003)

Douglas McNaughton

Irma Vep’s Spectral Mutations: The Black Catsuit and Its Implied 
Vampiric Attributes.

Juan Miguel Pardo Garrido

Creating Characters and Priming Performances: The Under-appreciated Role 
of Costume and Make-up Workers in UK Television Production 1950-2000

Vanessa Jackson

‘You’re not progressive enough for this!’: Queer codes and costume for 
/Sex and the City/And Just Like That/’s Miranda.

Kate McNicholas Smith

Interior Makeover Programmes: Strategies Behind the Camera

Neville Knott

In front of a live studio audience: Authenticity, authority, and 
liveness in production design for non-fiction television.

Geraint D’Arcy

Designed for Women? The aesthetics of domesticity in early (pre- and 
post-war) British television made for women

Kevin Geddes and Mary Irwin

Front Row: /The French Chef /and its Kitchen Counter

Verena Mund

Shifting the Scenery. Natasha Kroll: “display man” and set designer

Lesley Whitworth

Predicting Set Production Limitations and Possibilities through 
Production Practices: A comparison of South Korean and Egyptian television

Maria Andrea Etienne

Dirty walls and peeling paint: the set design of public hospitals in the 
Brazilian television series /Under Pressure /

Mariana Schwartz

Set Design as Involuntary Memory Cue:/ Pushing Daisies, WandaVision/, 
and 1970s Sitcoms

Jennifer Gillan

Design and Reflexivity in Irwin Allen’s 1960s Adventure Series.

Jonathan Bignell

Q&A with the members of the Production Design Research & Education 
Network (PD-REN)



A CREAM, University of Westminster conference


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