Edinburgh Napier University

The portfolio is your opportunity to show us your skills, talents, interests, passion and creativity.

We invite candidates to interview based on the potential we see in your submitted portfolio, so it is important that you carefully prepare your work following the guidance below.

Portfolio Content

As a guide, your portfolio should present 5 separate projects, over a maximum of 15 pages.

For each project you could include:

• one page presenting the final outcome of the project
• a second page of development/sketches/alternative ideas
• and a third page showing your inspiration behind your approach to the work: this could be the work of other designers and artists, or simply observations gathered from the everyday world around you

You don’t need to add loads of text to explain your projects, but you may wish to add small titles or comments to each page to let us know what the project is about, and to show which pages are development work and which are inspiration.

These are just some suggested guidelines. Remember, your aim is to showcase your skills, talents and creativity, so make sure you include your best work, showing us how you explored your ideas, developed and finalised your response. Your projects can include any creative work you are proud of and want to show us. We would love to see a reflection of your personality and interests going beyond the usual School/College projects. More than anything we want to see your passion for visual culture and graphic design!

Portfolio Submission

Please send us your portfolio as a single PDF file either through email or through an online file transfer site (dropbox, onedrive, wetransfer etc.) You will be given instructions on who to send it to by email, if you have been invited to submit. Please make sure you submit by the date given. 

You can create a PDF using design software, or using PowerPoint or other widely available desktop applications. Please make sure that your images are of a large enough size and high enough quality that we can clearly see the work. If you wish to email your PDF the file will need to be smaller than 25MB. Files should be named clearly with your full name, and UCAS ID Number like this: Adam Smith 123-456-7890.pdf

Please state clearly in your email, your full name, UCAS personal ID number, the name of the course – BDes(Hons) Graphic Design, and whether you are applying for entry to year 1 or for advanced entry (for those students holding prior qualifications). Please note that we are likely to have only a very small number of places for advanced entry to year 2 or 3. Where we do not have places available for advanced entry we will consider all applications for year 1.