What is a collection of works? We answer this question repeatedly every year. Even though the written definitions we give are similar to each other, in fact, the collection of works is highly unique for each student. So, what is a collection of works? I always believe that the most direct and accurate way/medium for art students to obtain art schools and professional applications is the school itself. Today, I'd like to share some official suggestions from the collection of works of UAL London University of the Arts.

　　 Official suggestion of UAL London University of the Arts Collection:

　 UAL London University of the Arts has given the following nine keywords through the combination of text and video:

　　Experimentation

　　Cultural Diversity

　　Relevant work

　　First page&Strong Ending

　　Clear Imagery&Edit Work

　　Show Passion&Creativity

Before starting to interpret the nine keywords, UAL London University of the Arts also showed us its definition of the portfolio:

First of all, a very "exclusive" UAL like the one above is given London University of the Arts The official definition of the collection of works, and I also draw several key points for you:

-"A window into your own unique world through which we can see your skills, personality and potential.".

In order to demonstrate these abilities, ual also gives suggestions to show your ability to use different materials, understand the theme, and use different technologies to create through the collection of works.

　　-“A portfolio should be professional, But human – we want to see you among the pages.

Many times, we often say that overseas art schools will place more emphasis on students' creative thinking and divergent ability than domestic art schools. Many students often regard "creativity" as the most important part of their works collection when they see this.

But in fact, for art schools, the creativity of the collection of works is important, but at the same time, the collection of works also needs to emphasize the display of professionalism. Students also need to show their professional level through the collection of works.

Secondly, "see you among the pages", whether for art colleges or art students abroad, we are basically "isolated" from the enrollment reviewers of colleges and universities before submitting the collection of works and application materials. If you want the school to see yourself, the collection of works is the key point. You need to let the school remember who you are through the collection of works.

　　 Based on this definition, UAL London University of the Arts has given the key words for question and answer:

　　 Experimentation

In the process of consulting with students, I learned that many students had the intention of DIY collection at the beginning, but why did they choose to seek help from the organization in the end? Many students gave feedback on one reason: they did not know how to determine their own creative theme, or how to effectively spread their thinking. Many times, the inspiration they came up with was fragmented, and it was difficult to in-depth study, or even to actually land.

In fact, for the collection of works, any inspiration or creation theme is not out of thin air. No matter what major you apply for, your work projects should be related to you. They have a certain relationship with you.

For example, in the collection of works by Yu, the classmate of Natural Light, the first project is related to his mother. Yu's mother used to be a doctor, and they often argued about some of Yu's diseases. During the long time of communication and life, Yu began to have some unique ideas about the mother daughter relationship. In her opinion, the mother daughter relationship is similar to the relationship between people and daily objects, coexisting but "wearing" each other in daily life.

The creation of this project involves many fields such as installation, book design, influence, graphic design, etc. It is presented in the form of multiple story books. The title of each book is based on the text and appears in each small work.

This collection of works highly integrated with our own experience often injects students' unique views on an event, because different environments and experiences have created us today, and it is these experiences that make us different from each other, thus making our way of expression and understanding particularly special.

　　 Cultural Diversity

Multi cultural factors, which is actually an idea that art colleges and universities have generally paid attention to in recent years, and put an unusual emphasis on. Many students have a very wrong perception in the stage of preparing their works collection - I want to cater to the style of art schools, or to cater to the overseas/western cultural tone. But in fact, for art schools, collections full of cultural characteristics are more fasciating.

Last year, I published an article on the major changes of RISD, UAL and other art schools in 2018. In this article, I mentioned two new majors of RISD, which are all based on culture.

Our world is developing in an increasingly diversified way. In fact, the majors are also constantly blending. We all know that more and more art schools are constantly promoting interdisciplinary ideas and fully integrating them into teaching. The works with multicultural background often have a high degree of diversity and cultural research.

For example, I got RCA in natural light Royal College of Art In the works collection with Ziyi, a classmate of LCC London School of Communication, she discussed the influx of refugees in Europe through her graphic visual works. Ziyi visited the streets of Europe to do interviews and research to understand people's attitudes towards refugees, so as to deepen the marginalized group of refugees into other marginalized groups we see everyday. From the perspective of refugees, extract visual element symbols, and eventually expand the scope of attention to the entire marginalized population, so that more people pay attention to these special groups.

　　 Relevant work

Your works collection project must be meaningful and worthy of people's consideration, rather than a collection of works piled up to show their ability. Such works have no meaning for art colleges. Apart from your superb technical ability, the school cannot see your creative thinking and consciousness logic.

Therefore, first of all, the most basic requirement of a portfolio is meaningful. Second, this "meaning" is not only in the theme direction of a portfolio, but also every step you go through in the creation of a portfolio should be meaningful.

I once received a student in 2018. At the stage of work collection evaluation, she showed her teacher a set of works during school. This set of works contains a lot of sketches and illustrations of logical divergence, which seems to be very rich in content. But when the teacher asked her why she would think of doing this step, She replied, "Actually, it's not interesting. After the work was finished, the teacher said that we should not only submit the final work, but also include 20 process maps, so I gathered 20 works."

I think many students majoring in art and design have heard of this situation or have encountered it themselves. They first work out the results, and then go back to deduce the process according to the results.

The collection of works thus produced seems to be rich in content, but in fact, as our teacher asked, what is the meaning of each step? When we explore and study a project or topic, the ultimate goal is mostly to express our views or try to solve a problem. It is absolutely impossible to carry out creative expression by pushing backward.

Every page in the portfolio should be fully utilized, because for you, the content of every page is an opportunity to show your ability in some aspect to the school. It is not only a page of work, but also an opportunity. If the school requires you to submit a 12 page portfolio, it means that you have 12 opportunities to show your abilities and ideas to the school in 12 directions.

Secondly, even some conceptual, experimental, or creative themes should have a certain meaning. For example, many students will use "time" as a creative concept or inspiration source, but time for us is a very abstract concept that is difficult to materialize, If you want to show such an abstract theme in a concrete and meaningful form, you need to have the ability to abstract into concrete.

For example, it is still Ziyi's work collection. One of the projects is based on the creation theme of time. In this project, she combines the concept of time crystal in physics to study the extension of time and express it through a series of visual displays.

In this project, Ziyi has also done a lot of back and thinking, and the final product is also in the form of visual elements extraction, implemented with origami posters, and font design.

　　 First page&Strong Ending

For most art students abroad, the collection of works is cyclical. Generally speaking, the preparation period is 6-12 months. For a long period of work creation, the collection of students' works is constantly being completed, but at the same time, students' ability is also constantly upgrading in the process of learning and creation.

Taking the students of natural light as an example, most of the students were just exposed to the overseas art teaching mode and the overseas art creation thinking mode when preparing the first collection project. In fact, they needed a certain transition period to adapt. At this time, everyone's works were not very mature.

On the one hand, students need to adapt, and on the other hand, especially the students with zero foundation and transferred majors, students' first projects will be relatively "dull" and "single", students' creative thinking has not been fully opened, and it is difficult to achieve very complete and sufficient content of the portfolio.

For example, in the following student case, Qiuhui The student is a student who applied for graphic design from jewelry design to major. In the first project of the collection, she mainly combined the advantages of her original major - a high understanding of materials and strong hands-on production ability, and carried out a real visual display of her design elements, turning the graphic expression into a real, tangible three-dimensional object.

Therefore, according to the order of creation time, for most students, the earlier the collection is made, the weaker the overall comprehensive ability is. If the final typesetting is done according to the order of creation completion, it is likely that the recruitment teacher will give up the first work when he sees it.

"Let's suppose such a scenario. When we open a book, what kind of content do you want to see most?" Is it ordinary text, or is it full of visual and highly attractive content? Our collection of works is actually a "book". For any book, its first page is very important, but it is also the "first page" that many students will ignore.

Therefore, the composition of the collection of works also needs to be balanced and focused. In the interpretation given by the official UAL, it is said that in the final arrangement of the collection, that is, in typesetting, the balance of the overall collection should be maintained as far as possible, and each work has a certain height and professionalism. Secondly, it is recommended that you put the best two works at the beginning and the end respectively, and keep the balance of the works in the middle, It will not bring too big a gap experience to the examiners of admissions officers.

　　 Clear Imagery&Edit Work

What is the most regrettable point of the collection? Did you not achieve the final desired effect? Or did it take a lot of time? Or did you take many detours to find a solution? None of them. Most regrettably, I am afraid that everything in the early stage is perfect, but the final work is not clear or well expressed.

This is especially important for the works that need to show the shot image at the end. Shooting clear works that can show the final product does not mean that you must be an excellent photographer at the same time, or you must have a set of high-end equipment, even in dynamic image works, It does not mean that you need to keep a running record of all processes.

Instead, you need to show your works from as many angles as possible, which is better to show them in the form of pictures? Or is it better to express it in combination with video? At the same time, what kind of perspective or experience do you want to bring to the audience through these media? All these need to be combined with your works to fully consider and decide later.

Secondly, I want to remind you that you must choose the best media and way to display your works. For example, in the first student case we saw today, for Yu, if the whole work only stays in the part of book design, then the project is actually just a book work, But Yu combined the concept of space curation, combined books with infrared induction light boxes, videos, handmade paper and silk screen printing, and expressed them in a multi-dimensional way, thus showing her personal feelings and understanding of mother daughter relationship in different "dialogue contexts".

　　 Show Passion&Creativity

Beautiful works can certainly give people an impression, but the expression full of characteristics and creativity will catch the heart of the enrollment reviewers more. For students majoring in art and design, if they want to fully express what they think as much as possible, it requires basic precipitation and accumulation, but the collection of works is not just a collection of results or skills.

When applying to an art school, you need to let students see more of your passion and enthusiasm for your profession, which can not be fully demonstrated through the final product. At this time, we need to use more "thinking process" to show it to the enrollment reviewers.

Don't think that putting drafts and ideas extension in the collection is a waste of pages of the collection, or that it is unnecessary or will affect the beauty of the collection.

Only when you present these "processes" to the school in an intuitive visual content can the school know what efforts you have made to apply for the school, and what aspects of preparation and ability accumulation you have made in the preparation process. Because of this, the school can understand where your "passion" and "creativity" are.

In the following case, Wu, a natural light student, took "books" as his emotional sustenance device and presented them artistically. When Wu was a child, she had an experience of falling into the water. This experience has become an indelible shadow in her heart in the future. The feeling of weakness and helplessness that was infinitely close to death made her suffer from deep-sea phobia.

Therefore, in her collection of works, she "wrote" this experience into a book, which is expressed in the form of books combined with installation art. First of all, she conducted in-depth research and analysis on deep-sea phobic people, who often fear sharp things; And these patients also have a fear of things that are repeated or cyclical; Finally, the main source of fear is the suffocation in the confined space.

Wu expressed the most important symptoms of these three patients concretely, using spikes, simulated prop eyeballs, and a grid divided and expansive page design to carry the three symptoms respectively.

In the process of selecting materials, Wu has carried out many attempts and experiments, constantly thinking about the applicability of materials and the sensory feelings it brings to people. This process is actually very tedious, and needs constant thinking, research, and simulation tests. But in the end, just like the effect of the work, Wu also found the most suitable expression materials for this project.

　　 To sum up, the above points are actually the following six dimensions:

　　 Personalization is essential

When submitting the collection of works, we should first make it clear that we are applying for a specific major. Therefore, schools are more willing to see students' understanding of the major and their enthusiasm and attitude towards the intended major than their basic skills and abilities in the art field. Through the attitude conveyed by the collection of works, we can see the potential and qualification of students.

If students want to show their uniqueness as much as possible, they need to have a certain sense of creative thinking and be able to show their own unique "labeled" and "personalized" ideas and opinions.

　　 Consider your audience

The composition order of the collection is also critical, but it is also a node that is easy to be ignored. UAL does not recommend students to arrange their portfolios honestly according to the chronological order of their portfolio creation. After all, works with a long history will expose more problems for students.

UAL suggests that students make some plans for the collection of works to guide the enrollment reviewers to start the review of the collection of works from a unique perspective. For example, when we think of a work collection as a book or a song, a good beginning or prelude+interesting, rhythmic middle paragraph+strong end, it is enough to give the audience a strong feeling and experience.

Secondly, for some special majors, such as digital media, video, installation art and so on, students should especially consider facing the audience of their works, and consider whether their works can give each other enough space to think, and also can communicate with each other through their works to convey their ideas.

　　 Balance process and performance

Don't ignore those seemingly imperfect drawings or unfinished process plans, because they are also part of the work project. A complete work actually includes the whole creation process in Britain, because it is these processes that bring the final product.

At the same time, for schools, these processes are also ways for teachers to understand your thinking consciousness. But one thing to remind everyone is that if you need to submit samples of your works, please ensure that they are placed and fixed on the same size of clean cardboard. They are your works, and you need to make a good impression on them.

　　 Be decisive

Although it is attractive for art colleges and universities that students can show their abilities in many aspects and use various tools and materials as much as possible, they prefer to see collections of works with trade-offs and primary and secondary relationships rather than just piling them up.

The school needs to see your ability to "choose" a work. For example, in the process display part, you should selectively show important links and thinking nodes. You don't need to submit all the creation processes. For example, when we learn English, we start with letters and phonetic symbols. But when we have gone through a long learning process and learned English writing, we don't need to tell others that we have learned letters, phonetic symbols and sentence making before each creation, Because when your important nodes (articles) are displayed, you can actually infer the efforts you have made.

In the composition of the collection, try to show the key nodes, because every page in the collection is an opportunity, and do not waste any opportunity. Secondly, if your work is an image work, you can also capture some key images from the dynamic images to preliminarily display your work.

　　 Show us what you love

In the stage of preparing the collection of works, at the beginning, we must not assume what the art school wants to see, or what style and form the school likes, but think more, "What do I want the school to see?". Because for the school, your thoughts and hobbies are the key to your independence from others, and also the direct presentation of your unique views.

　　 Think about format

Choose the best display form for your work, and think about whether this way can highly reflect your creativity; Whether it has practical significance (for example, when it is necessary to mail real works, will the display form hinder the transportation of long drawings?) According to the situation of works and the submission method required by the school, we should consider the display form of works comprehensively.

Secondly, it is necessary to consider the significance and value of each page of the collection of works, why they should be displayed, and what are they meant to express? Or to show your ability in which aspect? Think clearly about the positioning and significance of each page before typesetting and planning.

Your collection of works needs to be able to clearly express your views and creation process, without procrastination and fussiness. If you are not sure about the meaning of some contents in it, then delete them from the collection of works.

These are the official suggestions we brought to you today about the collection of works of UAL London University of the Arts. Most of the contents have been simply interpreted, and explained by the case of the students who received the UAL offer in combination with natural light. If you want to learn more about the relevant details of colleges and universities and majors, please come to the natural light free consultation.

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