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Appalachian State University Department of Art

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Graphic Design

Overview Curriculum Courses GD Faculty Laptop Requirement Resources

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Laptop Requirement

The Graphic Design program will require students who pass GD Candidacy Portfolio Review to purchase a laptop computer and design software. Since this requirement is only for students who enter the university in, or after, Fall 2011, these students will not go through Candidacy Portfolio Review until Spring 2011 at the earliest.

Graphic Design is still developing its minimum specifications and will be working to develop hardware/software packages. Until these are in place, we recommend the following for students who wish to purchase a computer and software for use in our program:

Hardware

We recommend Apple Macintosh MacBook Pro laptops. A laptop puts a student’s work at their fingertips anytime and anywhere they wish to work. Buy the fastest laptop computer you can afford with extra RAM. Also, purchase a large external hard drive (500 GB+) for daily backups of your computer. The university has some minimum hardware configurations. You can find them here.

The University Bookstore sells computer packages including 13-, 15-, and 17-inch laptops. We recommend the 15-inch models, though all sizes will be fine. If you purchase a small screen, you may want to consider purchasing an external display. More info can be found here.

Software

GD Students should also purchase Adobe’s Creative Suite 5.5 Design Premium which includes Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver and Flash. You can purchase this software through the university bookstore. We also recommend the purchase of a word processor/spreadsheet package (either Apple’s iWork or Microsoft Office).