Honours Bachelor of Brand Design (Co-op)

Program Overview

The Honours Bachelor of Brand Design is a four-year degree program that responds to the rapidly changing world of graphic design by preparing students to be forward-looking brand designers with strengths in collaboration, research, critical and strategic thinking, technical design execution and brand storytelling. It is built on multidisciplinary pillars of research, critical thinking, strategic brand development, technical design execution and brand storytelling.

Brands are more than logos or sales tactics, they are carefully developed relationships between the brand makers and audiences – a brand is a promise to follow through on a purpose and a set of values that taken together express how someone perceives an organization or product. The Honours Bachelor of Brand Design degree is an opportunity to build a knowledgeable creative community of collaborators and strategic designers who are able to bridge business strategy, technology and the design world in order to produce innovative brand experiences.

Graduates of the Honours Bachelor of Brand Design degree program will have the analytical and technical skills to:

• Communicate and evolve the brand through the design of visual and physical, online and offline identities and experiences.
• Research to create and tailor designs that work across different touchpoints, generating dynamic, responsive, multi-sensory and personalized brand experiences for customers.
• Write, visualize and translate the brand story across these touchpoints and engage long-term with the emotions of audiences.
• Collaborate towards creative innovation with multidisciplinary teams.

This program responds to the dynamic and growing field of design, training learners to:

• Create streamlined brand messaging across numerous mediums and touchpoints that engages audiences.
• Understand new technology and be able to work across the old and new channels.
• Have strong writing skills and adapt to different situations, audiences and genres.
• Be flexible in that they are able to adapt to changing work and work environments (multiple sectors, services and products).
• Work collaboratively and bridge business and creative roles, by understanding the culture, processes, and language of the branding business.
• Utilize diverse and quantifiable research methodologies in the design process.
• Offer a diverse and customizable range of services to clients, particularly niche services (e.g. video and animation).
• Have the ability to compete on tender: put together a professional sales pitch while offering a competitive price.

Your Field Education Options

• Students must complete a 420-hour paid co-op work term in the spring/summer period between the third and fourth year.
• Students have the opportunity to complete this co-op domestically and/or internationally, as opportunities arise. The majority of co-op work terms are completed in the Greater Toronto Area, where the design sector is robust and the majority of interaction jobs are located.
• The School of Design Field Placement team works with many notable training partners, including agencies such as Publicis, K9 Strategy + Design, Trevor/Peter and Relish Interactive; larger, well-known brands such as Nelvana (Corus Entertainment), Rogers Media, Mozilla, Crayola and PUR Gum; and a variety of industry-relevant arts and design institutions, including the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), the Association of Registered Graphic Designers (RGD) and Applied Arts.
• The work term allows students to apply the skills, abilities and knowledge they've acquired in the program in a workplace environment or through an appropriate interaction design research project or initiative. Students gain valuable experience and the opportunity to reflect on the application of previous learning. A faculty member evaluates the student based on feedback provided by the employer.
• Students will develop a digital portfolio demonstrating artifacts completed during the co-op work term.

Program Learning Outcomes
The graduate has reliably demonstrated the ability to:

• Use ideation techniques to generate innovative design solutions that respond to a creative brief.
• Participate in a collaborative brand-building project to produce an outcome that meets the needs of the client.
• Incorporate interdisciplinary theoretical approaches in the planning, production, and critique of design and strategy work.
• Plan, conduct and apply research in order to contextualize and make informed design.
• Assess the social, environmental, and economic impact of the design solution in order to prioritize sustainability issues in design practice.
• Use the fundamental principles of branding to address the needs of the brand design and strategy for clients of various scale.
• Design solutions in support of a brand strategy.
• Communicate information, arguments, creative ideas, and brand stories persuasively, to a range of audiences, using a variety of verbal, visual, and written communication techniques.
• Utilize professional practices and knowledge of the business of branding in all design and strategy work.