Description

Total Contact period: 54 hours

Weekly contact: 4.5 hours of Lecture time

Design Thinking and Brand Strategy

Building a clear, consistent identity that connects with the right audience.

• Brand voice and messaging
• Visual identity basics
• Audience personas
• Positioning strategy

Why it matters: Makes your business recognizable and trustworthy.

The 90-Day Design thinking and brand strategy Curriculum

Here is your weekly roadmap. Each week focuses on mastering one specific block of the design thinking and brand strategy ecosystem.

Month 1: The Human Mind (Empathy & Definition)

• Week 1: Foundation Blast (Focus on memorizing the 20 core concepts, setting up Figma, and running your initial practical exercises).
• Week 2: User Research & Empathy Mapping: Focus on how to ask open-ended questions. Learn to sort raw human interview notes into Says, Thinks, Does, Feels quadrants.
• Week 3: Defining the Core Problem & Persona Creation: Learn to distill raw empathy maps into a single, cohesive target user persona. Practice translating complex user messes into sharp "How Might We" statements.
• Week 4: Divergent Ideation Frameworks: Focus on raw brainstorming volume. Use techniques like Crazy Eights (sketching 8 distinct ideas in 8 minutes) to break your brain's internal editor.

Month 2: Brand Strategy Foundations (Positioning & Core)

• Week 5: Competitive Audits & Market Mapping: Find 4 competing businesses. Map them out on an X/Y-axis matrix (e.g., premium vs. affordable, traditional vs. modern) to spot blank spaces in the market.
• Week 6: The Brand Core (Purpose, Vision, Mission): Learn how to craft statements that don't sound like corporate fluff. Focus on Simon Sinek’s "Golden Circle" model (Why, How, What).
• Week 7: Value Propositions & Messaging Frameworks: Master the art of writing a clear headline that explains exactly what a business does. Practice turning features ("10GB Storage") into benefits ("1,000 songs in your pocket").
• Week 8: Brand Archetypes, Personality & Verbal Voice: Choose a brand archetype (e.g., The Magician, The Everyday Man). Write the exact same customer email using 3 completely different brand voices to understand tone.

Month 3: Bringing Strategy to Life (Prototyping & Capstone)

• Week 9: Customer Journey Mapping & Touchpoint Strategy: Map out every single physical and digital step a customer takes from discovering your client to purchasing and reviewing. Find the low points and brainstorm strategic fixes.
• Week 10: Low-Fidelity Prototyping & UX/ UI Basics: Take your strategy and wireframe solutions in FigJam or Figma using only boxes, lines, and text. Focus on functionality and clarity over colors.
• Week 11: Launching and Executing Your Capstone Project: Spend this week fully building out your "Local Refresh" capstone project using everything you've learned.
• Week 12: Project Review, Portfolio Case Study, & Graduation: Package your capstone project into a 3-page visual case study (Context, The Strategic Problem, The Human Solution, and Result). Check yourself against the graduation benchmarks.