Cleveland Institute of Art Laptop Policy
Updated April 15, 2021
All CIA students are required to have a laptop. At a minimum, this laptop should support Adobe Creative Cloud*. Specifications for laptops suitable for Adobe Creative Cloud can be found in the table below.
The majority of first-year digital work is centered around Adobe Creative Cloud*. Once students enter their sophomore year, they are expected to own a laptop which meets major-specific requirements, outlined in the table below.
* All CIA students are provided with FULL Adobe Creative Cloud subscriptions. Students do not need to purchase subscriptions. Information will be distributed to incoming students before the start of the semester.
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Major
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Minimum Hardware Specifications
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Operating System Recommendation
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Animation
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15” HD display (UHD recommended)
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i7 processor or Ryzen 7 CPU
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16GB RAM
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512GB drive (solid state preferred)
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3-year warranty
- Recommended Graphics Card: RTX 2060
- Minimum Graphics Card: GTX 1660
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Windows
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Ceramics
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macOS or Windows
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Drawing
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macOS preferred
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Game Design
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-
15” HD display (UHD recommended)
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i7 processor
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16GB RAM
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512GB drive (solid state preferred)
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nVidia GeForce GTX 1060 or better graphics card
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3-year warranty
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Windows
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Graphic Design
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macOS preferred
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Glass
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macOS or Windows
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Illustration
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macOS or Windows
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Industrial Design
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-
15” HD display (UHD recommended)
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i7 processor
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16GB RAM
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512GB drive (solid state preferred)
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nVidia GeForce GTX 1060 or better graphics card
(for Windows)
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3-year warranty
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Windows preferred
If you use macOS, you will be able to accomplish much of what you need in Industrial Design. However, there are certain Windows-based applications that you will use in your Junior and Senior years that will only be available on CIA-owned computers (Solidworks and Alias).
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Interior Architecture
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macOS or Windows
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Life Sciences Illustration
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macOS or Windows
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Jewelry + Metals
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macOS or Windows
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Painting
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macOS or Windows
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Photography + Video
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macOS preferred
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Printmaking
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macOS preferred
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Sculpture + Expanded Media
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macOS or Windows
If you plan to incorporate more video into your practice, you will want to consider more robust specifications including a larger display.
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Some students may already own laptops that meet these minimum requirements. Students may continue to use these laptops for as long the device continues to support their curricular needs. In this scenario, students accept the risk that their laptop may not be able to address their needs for their last year(s) at CIA.
The student should select the laptop based on their curricular needs, individual preferences between macOS and Windows, and budget.
Support, and substitutions for the standard recommendations
Personally-owned devices will not be supported by CIA Information Technology, beyond a limited assessment. Hardware issues will need to be supported by the manufacturer, which is why every standard includes a 3-year warranty as part of the requirement. Questions related to how to run software are handled either through faculty or technical specialists, or through online support from vendors.
The Equipment Checkout will continue to provide a limited number of laptops for short term loans. These laptops are not a substitution for students owning their own laptop.
If a student has a question about whether a specific laptop will be suitable for their curricular needs, they are encouraged to check the requirements webpage for the software that they expect to use most heavily. All students should plan to have a laptop that supports the Adobe Creative Cloud suite, at minimum.
View requirements for commonly used software:
Please note that this is not a comprehensive list of all software packages used at CIA. In addition, some features or plugins for the above-mentioned software may only run on macOS or Windows, respectively.
As of April 2021, Apple supports Boot Camp Assistant on computers running Intel processors, which allows users to run Windows on their Mac. Note that Apple is in the process of changing their processors to the M1 chip, and computers using the M1 chip cannot use Boot Camp Assistant. While Apple’s M1 chip uses the latest technology, software developers are still in the process of converting their applications to be M1-naitive. In the meantime, some software applications will require a free piece of software called Rosetta in order to run.