Required: Applicants must submit a portfolio through the Portfolio section of the online application. Prepare a portfolio sequence of 10 to 15 images that best communicate your creative skills, thinking, and experience. The purpose of the portfolio is to show your individual perspective and creative skills. Include work that best demonstrates the breadth of your skills and creative process from previous educational and/or professional experience.
Optional: Applicants may submit a video introduction, maximum of three minutes, addressing this prompt: Please record and upload a video of yourself including the ways in which you wish to engage with the Parsons MFA Interior Design program and your research interests.
A strong portfolio includes process work such as iterative studies, sketches, and photographs that show how you arrived at a particular design solution. Your process work should demonstrate iterative development of the work. It is recommended that you include short text descriptions of your work within the portfolio that explain why, where, and how you created it, as well as what you learned or questioned through the creative process. All work must be your own. If a project was created collaboratively, please list your contribution and the members of your team. The admission committee strongly prefers to review legible portfolios in PDF format; illegible content will not be reviewed.
We welcome students from a wide variety of disciplines. If you are an applicant without previous training in interior design or design-related fields, you can demonstrate your aptitude by submitting examples of freehand drawing, photography, painting, sculpture, graphic design, three-dimensional work, furniture, product design or digital media, creative writing or other kinds of work. Time-based works such as film, video, performance, installation, or sound are also accepted.
For further guidance, please review this program-specific portfolio recommendations video from the Interior Design faculty.