Course summary

The BA (Hons) Branding, Experience and Retail Design is designed for creative thinkers who want to explore how brands communicate through identity, space, and experience. Blending branding, visual communication, styling, and spatial design, this course equips you with the creative skills, technical confidence, and critical awareness needed to shape meaningful brand experiences across physical and digital environments. You’ll work across 2D, 3D, and digital media, exploring how imagery, materials, composition, atmosphere, and storytelling come together to create impactful brand identities and environments. In your first year, you’ll build a strong foundation in core design principles while developing practical skills in photography, model-making, layout, and digital tools. This broad creative base prepares you for more focused and ambitious work as you progress. From your second year, you’ll begin to define your creative direction. You’ll explore immersive environments, experience design, and emerging technologies such as AR/VR, while responding to industry-style briefs and working collaboratively. Through presenting your ideas and engaging with feedback, you’ll gain a clear understanding of how branding and experience design operate in professional contexts and which career pathways inspire you most. In your final year, you’ll work independently on a self-directed Final Major Project in your chosen specialism, whether branding, retail design, styling, experience design, or a multidisciplinary mix. Alongside this, you’ll develop a professional portfolio, refine your communication skills, and explore socially engaged design, graduating with a confident creative identity and a polished body of work. Delivered at Hertford Regional College’s Ware Campus, the course offers a calm and supportive learning environment with easy access to London’s world-leading creative industries. With retail hubs, exhibitions, agencies, and cultural institutions within reach, you’ll be well placed to carry out visual research, stay connected to industry trends, and build valuable professional networks as you prepare for a career in the creative industries or further study. Why choose this course? During the BA (Hons) Branding, Experience and Retail Design course, you’ll develop the creative and strategic skills to design brand identities, spatial experiences, and visually engaging worlds. By working across 2D, 3D, and digital media, you’ll build a portfolio that shows your individuality and prepares you for a dynamic creative industry. A supportive place to explore and experiment: You’ll learn in a friendly, studio-based environment at Hertford Regional College, Ware campus, where small class sizes mean you’re seen, supported, and challenged. Practical workshops, group critiques, and one-to-one feedback will help you learn through doing, take creative risks, and grow confidence in your ideas. You’ll develop both your technical skills and your ability to think conceptually, reflectively, and independently. Learn from industry-focused teaching: You’ll gain hands-on experience in branding, spatial design, styling, composition, model-making, and photography, while also experimenting with AR/VR and emerging technologies shaping the future of experience design. Real-world briefs, collaboration, and professional practice skills prepare you for client expectations and workplace realities, ensuring you can present, communicate, and justify your creative decisions clearly. Career pathways across creative industries: You’ll graduate as an adaptable designer ready for roles in branding, retail and experience design, visual merchandising, exhibitions, events, prop styling, creative direction, and other contemporary design fields. This course gives you the skills, confidence, and portfolio to enter a world where creativity meets storytelling, strategy, and spatial imagination.