This online course tells the history of branding, how brands should be understood and how meaningful brands are built.

Branding theory and practice is often based on the notion that brands should somehow emulate human traits and behaviour, but unscientific metaphors such as “personality” or “DNA” detaches brand strategy from culture, history and ultimately reality. Building your brand on a foundation of unsubstantiated theory distorts the scope of creative possibilities and increases the risk of misguided strategic trajectories.

Brands are not coded with anthropomorphic DNA, but built from cultural materials, signifiers and themes. Brands are, in French semiologist Raphaël Lellouche’s words, “transmedia cultural entities”. Brand is a cultural category. Branding is, or should be, the strategic creation of culture.

Brands are evolved, like any other cultural entity, from an ideological belief system expressed creatively through an inspiring mythology, meaningful rituals, symbolic artifacts and distinct sites. Brands should therefore be conceptualized, designed and strategized as such.

Take the course and gain a deeper understanding of the phenomenon brand and how to design meaningful and relevant brands.

The course is based on original theories developed by Karl Grøndal.

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The term “iconic” is often misunderstood and misused in design discourse. Brands sometimes label a product as iconic even before it reaches the market—a claim that is premature and ultimately meaningless.

True icons do not emerge overnight. They are the result of a complex interplay between design strategies, marketing dynamics, and broader cultural developments. To better understand what it takes for a product to achieve iconic status, this course will explore the history of modern design icons and examine key concepts such as meaning density, cultural provenance, and intertextual references for you to gain a deeper understanding of icons and iconicity.

The course is based on original theories developed by Karl Grøndal.

Sign-up and be notified when the course is online.