Illustration + Design

The School of Art houses excellent facilities including studio spaces, computer labs with Wacom Cintiq Touch screens and animation stations, a digital imaging lab with large format printing, mounting and other services, letterpress equipment, photopolymer platemaking equipment, metal and wood type collections, binding equipment, darkrooms, wood and metal shops, sculpture foundry, ceramics labs, and external resources such as: the Center for Creative Photography, the University of Arizona Museum of Art and the Poetry Center as well as an excellent library that houses an extensive book art collection. The campus also houses the Learning Games Initiative Research Archive and the extensive Children’s Literature Collection.

Visit our Resources & Facilities page to learn more about the excellent facilities available for instruction in Illustration + Design.

American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) student chapter
Visit the AIGA website

Book Art Collective
Visit us on Facebook

UA Illustration + Design News
Visit us on Facebook

Persona Magazine
Visit us on Facebook

College Book Arts Association
Visit the website

• Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Art, Illustration + Design Emphasis
• Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art, Illustration + Design Emphasis

Contact an academic advisor or set up an advising appointment to learn more about School of Art programs and admissions

Spring 2022 Undergraduate Illustration + Design Portfolio Review

Applications are Due Friday, March 11 by 10:00 a.m.

This Spring’s review will accept 40 students into a combined Illustration + Design Program. 

Eligibility Checklist

• I have taken the majority of my First Year Experience (FYE) classes.
• I have taken or am currently enrolled in ART 265/ART 266. It is best to take at least one of these classes in the Fall before the review. But there is no penalty for going through the review multiple times so you should apply even if both required classes are being taken during the review semester. (Transfer students should make sure they have had the equivalent of ART 265/266. Check with the Program Chair to confirm).

Portfolio Review Procedures

• Online submissions of portfolios will be available from Wednesday, March 9 and are due by 10:00 a.m. on Friday March 11.
• I+D Faculty will review and rank the applications. This procedure may take a few days.
• You will be notified via email of your acceptance and the required classes for Fall 2022. Please note that if you do not register for the required classes in the Fall, you will forfeit your place in the I+D program.
• You will also be notified via email if you are not accepted into the program. You will be able to sign up for advising appointments to discuss your next steps and get feedback on your portfolio.

Portfolio Review Guidelines

Create a multi-page landscape format PDF portfolio that includes the following:

First page 
Completed I+D Application Form

Second page
Is your visual response to one of the below poems.  Choose any stanza from your chosen poem or the poem as a whole for inspiration. You may choose to include text but it is not required. Some approaches to consider:

• Book/Book Cover
• Typographic Composition
• Sequential Narrative/Comic
• Poster
• Photography
• Drawing/Illustration
• Animation

Green Light Go BY EMMY PÉREZ

To be a disco ball dangling in a storefront window, in the sun, with a cage on it. To be two and three disco balls, downtown McAllen, spangles of sun and water that grew tangerine skins late February, pink bottlebrush nostrils, buff-bellied hummingbirds. To be mirrors and hexagonal combs, mexican honey wasps, larvae, paper, wax. To make geometry without vocabulary, to be live music — take off your jacket, girl, wear your tank top . . . it’s ninety degrees! To be a green light go, downtown Corpus, after cars and trucks zooming on beach sand, before hot tubs. To be an orange sun driving from Anzaldúa’s grave, to be a cactus bloom fuchsia, opuntia, Laguna Atascosa, Laguna Madre, to be a watering hole, a mud chimney air vent for crawdad water tunnels. To be a silver lizard run over by tires, a swatch of river on asphalt, to be a bolt loosened from the border wall, to be a peso falling out of the border crossing’s revolving slot, to be a coke-bottle dove, a mexican coca-cola, a cooing quorum of lotería cards signing a resolution. To be a goose perched on top of an abandoned sink in a yard, in a town that fords the river, to be the woman stretched on her beloved’s grave, returned after decades. To be a kid in juvie, to be her guardian, the judge, the p.o., to be the letters she writes, the words that matter more than food, almost as much as music and more than makeup, nearly suns seen through the mandatory skylight, imagined by the control room monitor. To be el chalán, the last hand-drawn ferry on the river, its ropes pulled by pilots, to be a passenger almost on the other side.

What Kind of Times Are These BY ADRIENNE RICH

There’s a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows
near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted
who disappeared into those shadows.

I’ve walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don’t be fooled
this isn’t a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own ways of making people disappear.

I won’t tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods
meeting the unmarked strip of light—
ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:
I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

And I won’t tell you where it is, so why do I tell you
anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these
to have you listen at all, it’s necessary to talk about trees.

Next pages
The next pages should showcase one of your projects from process to finish. This should include a project description, research, thumbnail sketches, roughs, iterations/alternate variations, color studies etc. Use as many pages as necessary to clearly show your process of creating one of your assignments. Your chosen assignment should preferably come from ART 265 or ART 266. Transfer students may choose any project from prior classes or self-initiated work.

Next pages
The next pages of your portfolio should present 3 sample projects of your choosing, For each of these 3 works please include a short description and final image of the project. If your project is 3-dimensional, use as many viewpoints and detail images as needed to clearly show your work. Animations, videos, and websites should be displayed with a single still image from the project and a hyperlink to the work online.

Final pages
Please scan or photograph 2-4 pages from your sketchbook.

Submission process
Please name your PDF portfolios using your first initial and last name with the .pdf extension. (K-Leslie.pdf). Your PDF portfolios should be under 100MB. If you are having trouble reducing your MB size you can compress your PDF file here. 

Email your PDF submission to Portfolio Submission from your UA email account. Contact Kelly Leslie if you have any problems with the upload.

Evaluation, Acceptance, and Advising

• The work submitted should: Show an eye for composition and application of formal principles (scale, balance, weight, texture, direction, etc.); Communicate an understanding of form and sensitivity to materials; Show a clear understanding of color relationships; Demonstrate excellent skills and attention to detail; Show a facility with software. Ideas embodied in the work should be innovative and strong. Digital uploads should be clear and readable.
• If you have been accepted into I+D, your name will be placed on a list allowing you to register for the required courses* online. Register on time to get a seat in fall classes. You will only be guaranteed courses in the sequence indicated on the I+D grid (included with acceptance). If you do not register for the required classes in the fall semester, you forfeit your place in the program. If there are extenuating circumstances, contact I+D Program Chair Kelly Leslie to discuss.

*You must maintain a 3.0 GPA in I+D classes in order to be guaranteed admission into these classes.

Ready to join our community of dedicated artists, educators and scholars? Visit our Admissions page to start your application.