Portfolio standards and expectations vary per discipline at the graduate level. For more specific portfolio tips, sign up for an MFA information session or schedule a Portfolio Review with a counselor through our admissions portal.
Portfolio Requirements
Your portfolio serves to reflect your artistic interests and to present how these interests manifest in your work and practice. The portfolio can encompass multiple mediums or focus on a singular art form.
To ensure your portfolio receives thorough consideration from our faculty committee, please carefully review the submission guidelines below. Portfolios are submitted online as part of the online application. Should you have any questions, feel free to reach out to our Graduate Admissions Counselor.
- Submit 15-20 works representing your most recent and relevant work.
- Provide title, date of completion, dimensions, and material description for each image you upload. If necessary, you can add additional information in a brief description. We discourage extensive interpretations of the work.
- To provide the faculty committee with a sense of scale and tactility of the work, two-dimensional works should be photographed showing the edge of the work. Three-dimensional works should show some surrounding space for context.
- Upload a separate image for each individual work. Please do not submit a preformatted portfolio or composited images.
Portfolio File Specifications
We support media files as large as 5GB, but please be advised that larger files will take longer to upload from your Internet connection and may stall if you are on a wireless connection or one that cannot sustain a connection for the necessary period of time. Uploaded documents may contain no more than 75 pages. We support the following file formats:
- Video: .3g2, .3gp, .avi, .m2v, .m4v, .mkv, .mov, .mpeg, .mpg, .mp4, .mxf, .webm, .wmv
- Audio: .aac, .m4a, .mka, .mp3, .oga, .ogg, .wav
- Slide: .bmp, .gif, .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .tif, .tiff
- Document: .doc, .docx, .odg, .odp, .odt, .pdf, .ppt, .pptx, .rtf, .wpd
- Link: You can insert a link
The portfolio component of your application should showcase your design work and accompanying process and should reflect your voice and vision as a graphic designer. Consider how the portfolio can reinforce the themes present in your statement of purpose and reflect your body of work from your prior educational and professional history.
To ensure your portfolio receives thorough consideration from our faculty committee, please carefully review the submission guidelines below. Portfolios are submitted online as part of the online application. Should you have any questions, feel free to reach out to our Graduate Admissions Counselor.
- Submit 20 images in total which represent your skills as a graphic designer and creative thinker.
- Images should include examples of your best work that convey your understanding and prior experience of graphic design . These images could include posters, books, websites or interfaces, branding or visual identity, packaging, editorial, environmental, motion design, or any other projects that convey your experience with typography, color, composition, scale and rhythm, and visual hierarchy.
- We love to see projects that reflect your identity and community as a designer and maker. It is very helpful to see work you have created in a series or set, for instance, a set of 3 posters or a poster and an app, instead of just one poster, to see how you apply design decisions across materials.
- Include descriptions of each project along with an explanation of your role if there were other people working on the project.
- Images must be submitted in JPEG format, ideally with a pixel dimension of 1920 (wide) by 1080 (tall).
- If you would like to include a link to your portfolio website, please include it in your portfolio submission as a link.
More Tips and Recommendations
Your portfolio is one of the key aspects of your application and can weigh heavily in your admission decision. Here are a few tips to ensure that you are successful at putting together a strong portfolio:
Use a DSLR if you can to shoot your work, but you can also take good photos with your smart phone. Smaller pieces can be scanned at high resolution. Think about your lighting and also make sure to color correct/crop. Your work should look on the screen as close as possible to the way it looks in real life. Use neutral backgrounds of black, white or grey to photograph 3D works. Save all of your images to the cloud so they are backed-up and document as you finish your work! You do not want a piece to get damaged or lost before you have the chance to capture it. View our Photo Documentation Guide developed by our Otis Photo Lab.
These descriptions should be a few concise sentences about the piece and its concept. You should also include the dimensions and medium. You will submit these descriptions along with your work in SlideRoom. Please make sure you proofread for typos!
Think about the curation of your portfolio (which pieces you will include) and the order that you will upload your works into the online application. The maximum number of images you can submit is 20, so think about which pieces capture a balance of your technical skills and creativity. There should be an organizing principle to your portfolio, which may be by medium, theme or project. Think of how you want your images to flow and the viewer to experience them. Take out an older piece, or one that is not as strong as the rest or perhaps does not fit with the others in your portfolio. Remember, your portfolio should be a reflection of your best, most recent work!
Showing your work to an admissions representative is a great way to practice talking about your work and getting feedback on what you can do to improve. Having multiple portfolio reviews from diffiernt institutions can also help you curate a specific portfolio to each institution you are applying to. Schedule a portfolio review with an Otis representative here.