External hard drive — the hard drives in the lab will be cleaned multiple times over the semester. As such, you will need to have an external drive to transport and save your work. I suggest finding a drive that is at least 500gb, as file sizes in the arts can become totes cray. The hard drive will either need to be Mac formatted, or we will need to reformat the drives in class. Hard drives on Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/external-hard-drives-for-mac

Money for making prints / copies — If we need to bring in printed copies of our work (which we will), unless you have your own printer, your only option will be printing at the Service Center, Sunny Bucks or the library. (Or Wal-mart, depending on the project.)

Money for purchasing a domain & web host [estimated cost: $30]  — All students taking Portfolio Prep will be required to purchase a domain name and web host. Information about this will be handed out in the first week.

Digital camera & tripod — Part of being an artist means photographing your work. You have a couple options: buy your own camera (needs to be prosumer quality — such as the Canon T3-I), check out a camera from the department (keep in mind that other classes will also be checking out cameras, so availability is not guaranteed; you also will not have this free resource once you graduate), or hire a friend to help you take photos (notice the word hire; you have to make it worth their time and effort).

Money for ordering business cards[estimated cost: $20] (November 6) — As part of our semester-long project, we will be producing business cards professionally — we will submit our designs to have them printed and shipped back to us. While this will save us the hassle of having to buy special paper for business cards, it will cost money. However, we will be making an order with the entire class to save on production costs; if you miss that due date, you will still need to get the products printed, but it may cost more or the quality may be poor.

Access to PowerPoint — PowerPoint is the standard presentation software, and we will be using it for our presentations in class. If you do not have PowerPoint, you will need to look into purchasing a copy (you may be able to find discounts through computer services on campus) OR finding a computer on-campus that has it OR finding a friend who will let you use their copy. In the real world, not having the required software is not an excuse for not being prepared, nor is it an excuse in this class.