“In my class, doing ‘wrong’ is right,” said Professor Huang Wei, lead instructor of the course Brand Image Strategy & Design at Tsinghua SIGS. Cultivating students’ innovative spirit is a critical part of this course, which has been recognized university-wide as an exceptional course from 2016 to 2022 and has received both national and international recognition. "Innovative thinking is produced by the fusion and collision of different kinds of thinking. We should encourage students to dare to think, dare to make mistakes, and make progress through continuous mistakes, trial and error, and error correction.”

Professor Huang Wei, lead instructor of Brand Image Strategy & Design

Professor Huang Wei’s interdisciplinary course Brand Image Strategy & Design spans subject areas of design, economics, psychology, sociology, among other areas. The course became an open elective course at SIGS in the fall of 2004. It aims to teach students how to use visual images to represent a company’s core values and use branding to connect to consumers and create companies that last.

To make sure students think about brand strategy and design from a holistic and interdisciplinary perspective, Professor Huang brings together three professors as well as twelve advisors from different fields, including design, brand management, communications, and law.

“When you want to buy a safe car or a bottle of water, do you immediately think of a certain brand? Why do you have a deep impression of these brands? This impression, how was it cultivated? Is there any objective basis for the source of your impression?" These are the questions that Professor Huang asks his students as he pushes them to think critically about brand design strategy and design. In the course, Professor Huang also introduces his Brand Image System (BIS) theory, developed over 20 years by helping industry professionals solve branding issues and through research undertaken by his former students. BIS allows students to approach core questions in brand image strategy and design.

Design and brand strategy, however, is not just limited to artists and designers. Any future innovator or entrepreneur needs to understand these strategies to build a brand, and by extension, a company that will last. For this reason, Professor Huang leads four variations of the course: for the general student population; for those enrolled in art majors; for students enrolled in Open FIESTA’s Internet + Innovation Design (IID) program; and, for professional doctoral majors.

The contents of each variation of the course are structured around the backgrounds and requirements of his students. For art students, Professor Huang focuses is on design. He combines classes with art majors and students from the IID program. The combined group works to take a brand from its visual and artistic origins to its promotion and market applications.

In this way, the course Brand Image Strategy & Design doesn’t just focus on theory, but practical application. Course students research and analyze companies in the context of BIS, case studies of which have also been recently published in a compilation. For students who are already professionals, he brings their classmates to go onsite to their companies to offer guidance on what can be improved. For students who may not have professional experience, he asks them to analyze industries in their hometowns.

Brand Image Strategy & Design has had a lasting impact on students and the industry as a whole. As of June 2022, nineteen of Professor Huang’s students have founded enterprises or entrepreneurial projects. In addition, in order to help more enterprises' brand building, Professor Huang has been invited to give lectures to professionals in different sectors about BIS.

Hear from the students

Zhang Yu, a master's student in Dyeing and Weaving Design: "Since I took the class 'Brand Image Strategy and Design', my mind has been opened." The course content and the brand philosophy presented in the course inspired her to stop limiting herself to just designing silk scarves or fabric patterns, to consider the core values of the target consumer groups more comprehensively, and to distill and incorporate them into her designs.

Liuli Huizi, a master’s student in Visual Communication Design: "The course teaches students to explore the eternal emotions of human nature, condense them into core values that evoke specific emotions and become the ‘reincarnation’ of a brand. For future original branding, we want consumers to remember this 'birthmark' and create an emotional resonance so that they can fall in love with the brand."

Writer: Alena Shish

Editors: Yuan Yang, John Paul, Li Han

Photos provided by Huang Wei