The portfolio guidance listed below is for 2025 entry.
As part of your application, you are required to submit a portfolio as evidence of your artistic ability and potential. You should begin to plan your portfolio as soon as you decide to apply.
Assessors are not necessarily expecting a showcase of final work, but rather an indication of work in progress showing how you approach an idea or subject and develop the work from initial thought, through experimentation and enquiry, to resolved work.
In these short guides, you will find details of what we are looking for and how your work will be assessed. You will also find some general tips on how to plan and present your work and what makes a strong portfolio in different subject areas.
Assessment
Portfolios are assessed by a team of academic staff who are particularly interested in how you research and develop ideas visually and how you engage with your chosen discipline. This is broken down into four main areas of assessment, briefly summarised as follows:
- Visual Research and Enquiry shows the level of your engagement in intelligent, structured visual enquiry and how well you communicate this.
- Idea Development shows your ability to appropriately explore and develop ideas, and your level of skills in the use of materials or techniques.
- Selection and Resolution shows how well you judge which ideas have the most appropriate potential and your ability to bring them to a level of completion appropriate to your intended outcome.
- Contextual Awareness shows the extent of your knowledge of the subject you have applied for and how your work relates to it.
How the content of a portfolio provides evidence for the above categories will vary enormously depending on the person and the subject being applied to, and no two portfolios will be the same.
Planning and presentation
Assessors are interested in how you have decided to put your portfolio together. This means that your portfolio should be carefully planned and well presented.
Assessors will be judging your ability to edit your work, so be selective and strategic in your choice of material.
Aim to show a clear narrative or sense of the themes in your work, as well as the connections between the pieces.
If you have lots of high-quality work, include it. It can show that you have talent in breadth and are hardworking and committed. If you haven’t, select your best: these key gems can show us that you know what you are good at, and how to show it. There is no need to pad out your portfolio with work you’re not happy with.
Each image can be accompanied by a small amount of text, and applicants are strongly encouraged to make use of this opportunity. You should avoid including titles or descriptions of the work and instead explain the ideas behind the work, the challenge undertaken or any other significant factors.
It may also be useful to explain why you have included the image in its particular category (development work, resolved work or influences). Consideration should also be given to the graphical layout of the portfolio. Remember that assessors will be looking at your work on a screen so the digital image you present to them is what they assess, so be aware of the quality of photographs and scans. It is worth the time and effort to make your work look as good as possible.
The images demonstrating your influences may be images of work or objects which have inspired or influenced your work e.g. people working in the same medium or for the same audience, now or in the past; people interested in the same subject or theme, now or in the past; natural or man-made phenomena, objects, places or events which have inspired or provoked a response.
A strong portfolio is likely to display the following:
- Evidence of explorations through media that demonstrate strong drawing and image-making skills.
- Evidence of making. Some level of prototyping, and modelling through diverse media, with evidence of experimentation.
- Design process: demonstration of iterative thinking and designing including sketchbooks. Individual creativity in response to mundane briefs. Demonstration of personal interests.
- Research sensibility. An indication that applicants look beyond their own imagination for inspiration – images of people in their work, of things in the world, photographic studies, sketches, stories, cinema and wider culture.
Information for applicants to year 2 entry:
Year 2 applications should take all the above points relating to year 1 entry into account, but we would expect to see greater emphasis within the portfolio on completed Product Design projects.
- Applications are expected to have foundation skills in design drawing, underpinned by orthographic drawing, an understanding of perspective, and sketching for communication of use and assembly
- Portfolios should include photographs of physical prototypes of objects developed through an iterative process; photographs of objects in use and in context would be appropriate
- Contextual research into the discipline is vital to show an understanding of the field, we want to see your interest in the discipline evidenced through your work, and the observation and critical selection of the work of others
(updated 21/10/2024 to include information for applicants to year 2 entry)