SUNY NEW PALTZ BFA IN GRAPHIC DESIGN FIRST-YEAR APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS
Once you have been accepted to the College, you can submit your online portfolio for consideration by the Graphic Design program. We recommend that you apply for early admission to the College, so that your portfolio can be reviewed early in the Spring semester for Fall admission. If you apply to the College for Early Decision and are accepted, your portfolio should be uploaded no later than February 1. We will review it then. March 1 is the regular deadline for portfolio submission; we begin our review of these portfolios on that date.
Apply as early as possible. Note that the College reserves the right to close admission at any time without prior notification to applicants.
Please note: our program is a broad-based graphic design program. It does not prepare students for careers in illustration, animation, or game design. If you are strongly interested in these areas, it’s best to consider programs at other schools that focus on these specializations.
ASSEMBLING YOUR ONLINE PORTFOLIO
We have revamped our admissions requirement to provide greater access to applicants who might not have had access to traditional studio art and/or design programming in high school. Greater diversity in students’ backgrounds and experiences creates a richer program for us all. If you have coursework from high school to include, do. Or show us other projects you’ve been working on—or a combination of the two. We’re also interested in reading your statement and learning how you think about design.
Please review these instructions carefully. We cannot review incomplete applications or incorrectly formatted files.
- Your online portfolio should consist of 10-15 diverse examples of your best work. This can be work you did for a class and/or work you did simply out of your own interest or for a client. These examples may include: design work (logos, interfaces, brochures, layouts, typography, posters, packaging, zines), photography, illustration, video, etc. Only include original work: no derivatives of existing work such as copied illustrations.
- Images should be saved in JPEG or PDF format, and no more than 4 megabytes per file.
- Time-based work, such as video, may be up to 5 minutes in length. Please provide a link in the space provided.
- Please caption each example of work, by telling us about it: What did you do? Why did you do it? What would you change next time? In order for us to consider your portfolio it’s essential that you include this information.
- Please respond to the prompts below in writing. Your essay should be no longer than 400 words. Compose it in a word processing program and paste it into the space provided. We are interested to read your writing and hear your thoughts! This is another essential component of your portfolio.
- What is design?
- What can designers do in the world?
- Why do you want to be a designer?
