Graphic Design students have quite a few options open to them.  They can use either Apple Macintosh ® or Microsoft Windows ® based systems.  Generally, you will be better off with a Macintosh, since most of the Graphic Design industry uses Macs.  However, the primary programs you need in the Graphic Design field work just as well in Windows.  The main programs include Adobe Creative Suite, and Quark Express (if you don't want to use the InDesign program that is part of Adobe CS).

You'll be better off with a laptop for the reasons stated on the main student computers page, but a desktop will be acceptable as well.  Your system does not need to be that high end, but when you are working with large graphics files, you will see the most benefit from large amounts of system memory, and you will get some benefit from faster hard drives as well. 

You will want a minimum of 512 Megabytes (MB) of memory, but preferably at least 1 Gigabyte (GB).

Two SATA hard drives in a RAID 0 configuration should be more than fast enough, but a single 7200 RPM drive will be perfectly acceptable as well.