Fiona Crombie: Academy Award-nominated production designer on storytelling without words
About this episode
Fiona Crombie discusses the role of a production designer and the intersection of production design and storytelling in film.
If you’ve ever wondered what a movie production designer actually does, our guest today describes it in the simplest terms: it is everything you see in the frame that isn’t a costume. It turns out, production design has a lot in common with product design. Our guest is the visionary production designer Fiona Crombie. You’ve seen her work in incredible films like The Favourite, and most recently, in the hauntingly beautiful Hamnet. This film is currently taking the industry by storm with eight Academy Award nominations, including a nod for Fiona herself for Best Production Design. Trailer for Hamnet, nominated for 8 Academy Awards in including Fiona Crombie for production design From the sprawling architecture of a Tudor estate down to the specific curve of a spoon or the texture of a tablecloth, Fiona’s job is to build a physical reality that reflects the interior lives of the characters on screen. In our conversation, we explore how production design shapes performance, how historical accuracy balances with storytelling, how a visual “mission statement” guides an entire crew, and what it means to create environments that carry grief, love, and memory. Bio Fiona Crombie is an…
Topics covered
- production design
- storytelling
- film
- Academy Awards
- visual arts
Keywords
- Academy Award
- The Favourite
- Hamnet
- visual mission statement
- historical accuracy
More episodes of Design Better
- Paul Dichter: Stranger Things writer on why the writers’ room isn’t so different from the design studio
- Tessa Forshaw and Rich Braden: "Innovation-ish" and why most innovation doesn’t have to be a moonshot
- Luis Mendo: Designer turned illustrator on making things that could only come from you
- David Shim and Rachana Rele: Read AI CEO and VP of Product Design for AI-native products at Adobe on amplifying creative work — not replacing it
- Leonardo Giusti: Archetype AI's co-founder on physical AI and the limits of the chatbot
- Brooke Hopper: Adobe's machine intelligence design lead on what AI can't touch
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Design Better podcast page.