Want to learn more about branding? Take these 8 top branding courses
Looking for ways to take your branding knowledge and skills to the next level? Taking branding courses is a great way to stay up-to-date with the latest in branding so you can incorporate today’s trends and best practices into your work as a branding professional.
We’ve put together a list of our favorite branding courses for those looking to go beyond the branding basics. There’s a little something for everything on this list, with prices ranging from free to a few thousand dollars.
This article is part of Air’s Ultimate Guide to Branding. Click here to explore the rest!
8 branding courses every brand designer and professional should know about
When putting together this list, we went beyond branding 101 to offer a list of intermediate- to expert-level courses helpful for branding professionals who want to kick it up a notch.
Here are some of our favorite branding courses:
1. Brand Identity and Strategy
Brought to you by Coursera, Brand Identity and Strategy is a course from IE Business School for professionals who want to adopt a more creative approach to branding strategy. The course is taught by Dr. Maria Eizaguirre, a Rhodes Scholar winner who teaches marketing and branding at IE School of Human Sciences and Technology.
This online course is great for those who already have the fundamentals of branding down but want to further explore brand strategy. One thing that makes this course unique is the Capstone project, which allows students to implement what they’ve learned in the course.
Most of the course materials are available for free in audit mode. However, if you’d like to access the graded assignments and earn a certification, you’ll need to purchase the Certificate experience.
Price: Free
What you’ll learn:
Branding segmentation and how to narrow in on the right consumer
How to use brand positioning statements to attract consumers
More about brand personality and image and how to build brand houses
Nuances between different types of fonts, colors, and logotypes
What students say: With 513 reviews, this course has an average rating of 4.7 stars, and 93% of students are satisfied with what they learned.
2. Strategic Design: The Art and Science of Branding
Strategic Design: The Art and Science of Branding focuses on the process of creating, developing, and nurturing brands through design. This course explores approaches to strategic design from both the strategist and designer’s perspective, offering a multi-dimensional look at what it takes to create a successful brand.
The 45-minute, 8-part course is taught by industry leaders Su Matthews Hale and Michael D’Esopo — both senior partners at Lippincott, a leading brand strategy and design firm. They bring their real-world experience and examples to the course, making it easy for students to visualize and apply what they’ve learned.
The course is available on Skillshare, which you can get started with for free. If you love the course and want to take others on the platform, you can sign up for a membership at $13.99/month to get unlimited access to courses.
Price: Free
What you’ll learn:
Approaches to brand strategy
Building a strategic brand
The art of brand design
How to do strategic research
What collaboration looks like
How to implement what you’ve learned
What students say: Overall, reviews are positive, with 24% of students saying the course exceeded their expectations and 49% of students saying it met their expectations.
3. Brand Management: Aligning Business, Brand, and Behaviour
Brand Management: Aligning Business, Brand and Behaviour is another free course from Coursera. Taught by Professor Nader Tavassoli of London Business School, this course challenges traditional approaches to branding where the brand is seen as the visual identity and image. Instead, it shows how brands can be a customer experience delivered by everyone across the organization.
This course is ideal for designers, product managers, marketers, and social media marketing professionals who want to go beyond traditional approaches to brand building and take a more comprehensive, organization-wide approach to building and sustaining a successful brand.
The course takes about 17 hours to complete, helping you grow your skills in corporate branding, brand marketing, brand management, and brand identity. This is a great option for those who want to gain a deeper understanding of what brand management is and how to do it successfully.
Price: Free
What you’ll learn:
How to build brands from a broad organizational perspective
How to create a brand-led culture change with HR at its core
How to build brands in multi-brand companies across cultures and locations
How to measure brand health in new ways, both internally and externally
How to value and capture ROI to brands across the organization
What students say: WIth 1,814 total reviews, this course has an average rating of 4.9 stars with many glowing testimonials.
4. Contemporary Brand Identity: Using Verbal and Visual Branding
Presented by Domestika, Contemporary Brand Identity teaches you how to combine words and design to create a unique brand identity and reach multiple audiences. It’s the ideal course for digital marketing experts who want to understand better how brand messaging and graphic design work together.
This course is led by Michael Johnson, the founder of Johnson Banks, a renowned branding consultancy for brands like UNICEF and Duolingo. In the course, Johnson leads you through branding tactics he’s used over his 30 years of experience creating strategic brand concepts.
At the end of the course, you’ll have the chance to implement what you’ve learned by developing a brand manifesto and brand design toolkit using the verbal and visual concepts for an existing or new brand.
Price: $44.90
What you’ll learn:
Verbal branding, markets, and sectors
How to define a verbal brand
How to turn the verbal into visual
Ways to get the most out of an approved idea
How to put it all together
What students say: This course has 100% positive ratings based on 3,548 students and 156 reviews.
5. More Than a Logo: Design a Brand Identity System
Want to get more first-time approvals on your logo designs? More Than a Logo takes what instructor Ilya Lobanov has learned from his experience as a brand designer and creative director to show what it takes to design an entire brand identity system for clients.
This hour-long Udemy course is ideal for designers who want to sell more of their branding work. It was created for designers at any level in their career and those who wish to transition to a lead role in their organization. Some level of design experience with Adobe Creative Suite is required.
A unique feature of this course is that it focuses on the practical side of logo and graphic design for brands. Lobanov gives students a behind-the-scenes look at how he puts together concept visuals for an actual client.
Price: $89.99
What you’ll learn:
How to consider brand positioning in logo design
Advantages of designing a branding identity system
What elements go into creating a cohesive visual system
How to pick the best mockups to sell your design work
What students say: The average course rating is 4.4 with many testimonials speaking to the excellent instruction as well as the practical examples.
6. Business Branding with Personality: Build an Authentic Brand
Business Branding with Personality is another Udemy course for designers and strategists looking for tactics to bring their brands to life. It’s also ideal for entrepreneurs seeking more or better ways to connect with their audience humanly.
The course contains 3-hours of on-demand video lessons as well as 7 downloadable resources and assignments to apply what you’ve learned. Brand creator and strategist Steve Houraghan shows students = how to develop a brand personality = used to influence not only your visual brand identity but also your brand messaging.
Price: $109.99
What you’ll learn:
The roadmap for developing an authentic brand personality based on a scientific framework for your audience
Understand why your customers expect more from you and your brand story
How to create content marketing with the tone, language, and attitude of your brand.
How to integrate your personality into your brand voice, language, and tone
How to use your brand personality in your marketing strategy
What students say: This course has an average rating of 4.7 stars with 59% of students giving it a 5-star rating.
7. Global Branding and Marketing Certification
Brand2Global is an annual conference for global marketers that focuses on building and marketing brands that appeal to an international audience. Its Global Branding and Marketing Certification program offers 25 hours of self-paced online courses focused on strategic global branding and marketing. Upon finishing the courses, students are awarded a certification.
This certification is ideal for any branding professional who works on teams that build international brands. Earning the industry certification from the Localization Institute looks excellent on a professional’s resume if they are looking for digital branding jobs with global brands or agencies that work with global brands.
Price: $447.00
What you’ll learn:
How to avoid global branding and marketing mistakes
Ways to optimize global branding strategies based on positioning and brand architecture
How to develop a branding strategy that makes a global brand memorable and authentic
How to apply universal values to enhance the international appeal of a brand
How to localize global branding and marketing
What students say: Testimonials speak to the program’s helpful insights on localization as well as the quality of the tutorials.
8. Strategies that Build Winning Brands
Northwestern Kellogg School of Management’s Strategies That Build Winning Brands is an online certification program that teaches you the ins and outs of developing and managing a strong brand. The course is taught by Timothy Calkins, Clinical Professor of Marketing and Julie Hennessy, Clinical Professor of Marketing and Associate Chair of the Marketing Department.
This course was designed for brand managers, branding agencies, startup founders, entrepreneurs, marketers, creatives, marketing communications leaders, growth and strategy leaders, and product management. It’s interactive and hands-on while allowing students to implement the branding concepts they learn.
Price: $2,600
What you’ll learn:
How to develop brand positioning, character, and purpose
Different ways to evaluate the health of your brand
How to make smart brand portfolio decisions while sustainably managing brand growth
How to create a powerful marketing strategy for a real-world brand scenario
Ways to drive growth and combat competitors using a financial risk assessment
What students say: Testimonials on the program are favorable, and most mention that the takeaways are relevant to their real-world branding work.
Stay up-to-date with the latest in branding trends and best practices
Courses are a great way to expand your branding knowledge and skill set, allowing you to bring even more to the table for your organization, clients, and team. As trends and best practices change year to year, it’s important to stay up-to-date with the latest on a regular basis. One free and easy way to do that is by regularly reading your favorite branding blogs.
Be sure to bookmark Air’s branding blog so you don’t miss a single post!
