Portfolio Guidelines

Show us what excites you! Creative potential comes in many forms. We value the many paths that lead to creative careers and welcome students from a wide range of creative and academic backgrounds. That’s why some majors are portfolio optional, allowing you to apply with the materials that best showcase your strengths and future potential.

Request a Portfolio Review Submit your Portfolio

Portfolio Requirements by Program

If your major requires a portfolio, the artwork submitted in the application should showcase the strongest original work you have at the moment. We’re interested in your potential, not just your experience. Your work should reflect your creativity, original thinking, and unique perspective. Edit your portfolio carefully. Quality is more important than quantity and work created within the last two years is often the strongest.

Animation

Business for Creative Industries No Portfolio Required

Communication Design & Strategy Portfolio Optional

Concept Design

Fashion Business Management No Portfolio Required

Fashion Design

Fashion Accessories Design

Film Portfolio Optional

Game Design

Illustration

Interdisciplinary Art + Design

Interior Design Portfolio Optional

Photography Portfolio Optional

Product Design Portfolio Optional

Robotics and Human-Centered Design Portfolio Optional

Studio Art & Craft

Transportation Design

Undeclared

Guidelines

We encourage you to seek valuable feedback by sharing your work with us at any time. Connect with us.

Drawing Requirement (Transportation Design, Illustration, or Animation Majors)

Using AI in the Creation of Work

Optional Ideas for Exploration

The ideas below are completely optional and are provided only as inspiration for students who would like guidance while building their application portfolio. There is no expectation that you complete any of these activities, and you are welcome to pursue your own projects instead. If any of these suggestions are helpful, you may complete them more than once.

Original Work: Please do not include work that is derivative of existing media. Create original work from your own personal vision and experience.

Sketchbook Work: If you are submitting a sketch, ensure it is a strong representation of your skills and ideas, demonstrating thoughtful composition, movement, and confident line quality.

The Wellness Challenge Advertising

THE WELLNESS CHALLENGE

We can all appreciate how important it is for our mental well-being to stay connected with each other and the world around us. How can communities feel connected? Create a campaign that fosters human connection, builds awareness about opportunities to connect, and improves mental wellness.

CAMPAIGN CREATIVE BRIEF

Identify a need for connection, whether it’s physical (i.e. home-bound, isolation, etc.) or emotional (i.e. anxiety, depression, etc.). Identify or create a service, facility, group, or organization that offers support around the issue. Using your own ideas, present new ways of expanding awareness about this support among a segment of the public.

AUDIENCE

Choose one or more audience segments from this list as the primary audience for your solution.

people who already know about or use the service
people who do not currently use the service, but who might find it valuable
the public who should know about a new service

DELIVERABLES

Create an impactful, emotional story that outlines your idea. Your solution should be your original ideas presented in any, or all, of the following formats. Don’t forget that to complete our portfolio requirement you must submit a total of 8-12 pieces, so you can submit these along with other work if you need to.

Mission Statement – a brief 3-5 sentences about the solution you have developed

Inspiration Board – a visual representation of the images, video, etc. that have influenced your thinking, inspired your solutions, and that show a look/feel/existing solution that you would like to emulate in your own project.

Storyboard – a visual representation of your final solution; include ideation sketches, or representations of your idea, it’s parts, and how they connect in a narrative way

Additional 2-5 Items – choose your format and create 2 additional items to promote the solution i.e. an original song, a video, an event flyer, a presentation, a sketch of an app, etc.

Idea bubble charts
Written statements, tag lines
Social Media posts or campaigns
Video, sound or image-based commercials or promos
Images; idea boards, stills, collage – use of found images is fine since this is essentially a proposal of your ideas

Connection through Sports Advertising

CONNECTIONS THROUGH SPORTS

Athletes, more connected than ever, are expecting brands not just to deliver quality, but to resonate with them on and off the field. Identifying with a brand is more about creating memorable experiences that engage people, and athletes, at every touchpoint. For companies that specialize in athletic gear and/or footwear, this means reconsidering the ways they interact with the athlete before, during, and after their product purchase.

DESIGN BRIEF

Choose a sport-centric brand to work with and create a presentation that shares your new idea of how to connect athletes to the products they wear to win, and to the larger public through a memorable experience, engagement activity, or another method.

For best results, choose a segment of the audience your company creates products for, i.e. kids, parents who influence kids, adults, professional athletes, coaches, college athletes, amateur athletes, etc.
Conduct research about how they connect sponsored athletes to their brand and the products those athletes choose to wear and promote.
Explore the associated experiences around and beyond the products an athlete chooses.
In the past year, some companies made the decision to sell directly through teams, instead of through distributors. This has allowed more connections between the company and athlete/end-user. How can your chosen company continue to bridge the gaps between digital and physical experiences?
Create a holistic concept that infuses an engaging and thoughtful story around the athlete and product that shows your new ideas about how to connect athletes to both the digital and physical experiences with their product and the public.

PATHWAYS OF EXPLORATION (these are simply suggestions – you can choose anything; we suggest you focus on one Pathway):

Product Purchase Experience – In-store, mobile/online store, rogue/grassroots events, digital integration; How to make retailers better advocates, etc.
Product Launch Strategy – New and interesting ways to disrupt the industry and maximize impact for our product launches moving forward.
Customization Journey – We think the future of athletic sporting goods may very well be centered around the performance benefits of the ‘perfect fit’. How and where is this achieved? At home? In a store? How quickly can we turn around a custom product through thoughtful innovations in manufacturing and distribution?
Athlete Engagement – How the athlete interacts with the brand before, during and after product purchase.

GENERAL RESEARCH

Do some research into one or more of the categories below to discover your own ideas for making connections between athletes, the brand, and the public. We recommend doing thorough research in one or two different categories- but you can focus on all of them if you wish:

Social and Technology Trends Relevant to the Sport
Primary Brands & Competing Companies
Current Product Trends
Current Sales Strategies

Keep in mind the various channels that are used to present a brand:

eCommerce (Website)
Brick & Mortar Retail
Off-site Events (Local, Regional, National or Global Tournaments, exhibition games, etc.)
Direct Team Sales

DELIVERABLES

Mission Statement – a brief 3-5 sentences about the solution you have developed

Storyboard – a visual representation of your final solution; include ideation sketches, or representations of your idea, it’s parts, and how they connect in a narrative way

Additional 2-5 Items – choose your format and create 2 additional items to promote the solution i.e. an original song, a video, an event flyer, a presentation, a sketch of an app, etc.

Idea bubble charts
Written statements, tag lines
Social Media posts or campaigns
Video, sound or image-based commercials or promos
Images; idea boards, stills, collage – use of found images is fine since this is essentially a proposal of your ideas

Two Dimensional Design Project Any Major

Three Dimensional Design Project Any Major

Written Project Any Major

Create a Mood Board Interior Design

Document Your World Through the Lens of Color Interior Design

Visual Storytelling Interior Design

Space Interior Design

Inspiration Interior Design

Work Samples for Transfer*

Portfolio and Work Samples for Transfer Credit Evaluation Students seeking to transfer studio course credit from another university-level program may need to provide a set of work examples for review. Your admissions counselor will let you know what is needed after you are admitted.

*Once you have been admitted, additional work may be requested for our consideration and placement of transfer credit.

Guidelines & Best Practices

Tips for Documentation
Documentation of work must be clear. Aim for well-lit photos taken directly from the front (not at an angle).
When recording and editing sound, double-check your volume levels.

Writing Samples: Supplemental written-word creative work can be submitted but it will not complete the visual art portfolio requirements detailed above

Sharing Google Folders
If you are going to link to a Google folder to share your work, make certain the Share Setting is “Anyone with the link” can view it since we have a team of people who may need to access it.

Portfolio Submission Examples