Arek Dvornechuck
Branding Expert
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Naming your business or your product may seem relatively easy, however—the tricky part comes when you realize how huge of an impact a brand name can have on the success or failure of your start-up.
The worst-case scenario is you’ll pick a bland, ineffective name people just end up ignoring.
This is why you need to find as much professional guidance as you can get when trying to develop a name for your brand.
What are the best brand naming courses?
You’re in luck as I was able to put together the 10 best online courses for brand and business naming you can use as guides in the entire process.
You can always hire a “brand namer” or, better yet, do it on your own with the help of expert knowledge from online brand naming courses.
With so many branding and naming lessons you can find online, determining which one is the most comprehensive and relevant to your needs can be a bit challenging and time-consuming.
So we took it upon ourselves and looked into the different platforms across the web, like Udemy, Skillshare, Domestika, and more, to find the best naming courses from the most credible teachers.
Listed down below are the ten courses we think will be the most useful, regardless of your experience and expertise in the industry.
You just have to take note that each course may vary in length, coverage, as well as price.
You can also check out my other article, which features Top 10 Branding Course Online in 2021.
The truth is, names can either be a hit or a miss.
If you’re naming a new business, then it’s good for you since you can have a fresh start and a clean slate.
But if you are here because you’re renaming your company, you already have an idea why carefully choosing a brand name is essential.
Here are some of the reasons why:
Your brand’s name is more than just a label.
It is a word that should reflect your company’s mission, vision, and values.
Naming your brand is a way for you to tell its story and what it stands for to your target audience.
There are around 400 million brands in the world, which means 400 million brand names.
Whatever industry you’re in, you’re likely to have more than thousands of competitors, which means you have to stand out if you want to gain traction.
Your brand name will distinguish you from the rest of the companies, and it can also give you an edge that will make you unique and more appealing to customers.
Again, the right brand name can help you appeal and gain loyal customers.
The catchier it is, the more chances to attract some attention and that people will remember your company and products.
Of course, you also have to ensure that you’re providing top-notch services.
This way, satisfied customers can associate positive experiences and connotations with your brand name.
This reason applies more to straightforward brand names, like The T-Shirt Company.
To some entrepreneurs, it is more important for people to immediately figure out what they’re offering, which is also an advantage in itself.
Overall, your brand name, along with your logo and services, represent a good majority of your company’s identity.
This only proves that aside from creating an effective brand strategy, carefully selecting the name for your company and products is essential, too, as it can make or break your success.
This also means that it is now more than ever that you need all the help you can get to come up with a compelling name -- and that includes taking brand naming courses.
So without further ado, here are my top ten online courses for brand and business naming.
Scott Lancaster, the founder and current director of Clementine House Branding Agency & Brighter Freelance, is an advertising consultant with years of experience in branding and communication working at a top branding agency in the UK.
The most effective course for brand naming.
Brand Name Creation Masterclass is the best online course for beginners and veterans in the industry as it covers the basics of brand naming through structured lectures.
You can easily develop a memorable brand name in just five simple steps guaranteed to last long effectively.
Unlike other courses that utilize theories, Lancaster’s course focus on providing practical strategies that you can apply right away.
Aside from these, you will learn how to check trademarks and generate a domain name that works best for your brand.
Overall, this course’s strategic approach makes it easy to follow and, most importantly, an effective guide in creating a brand name.
Duration: 1 hour
Experience Level: All
Language: English
Subtitles: English (Auto)
Price: $84.99
Enroll in Brand Name Creation Masterclass (Udemy)
Miguel Hernandez is the founder and CEO of Grumo Media, who has provided marketing videos for Microsoft, Walmart, and other prominent personalities like Ashton Kutcher.
Learn to generate the perfect brand name through a practical course.
In his Find The Perfect Name course on Skillshare, Fernandez provided a relatively short lesson that offers key information that can help in selecting brand names that work.
In one of the lessons, you will learn “The 10 Attributes of a Great Company Name,” which will come in handy and make the entire brainstorming process easier for you.
As an exercise for the course, you will be accomplishing a project where you have to provide five brand names that tick all of the criteria.
This way, you will be able to apply what you learned and potentially generate a brand name for yourself.
This course is short and straightforward, making it suitable for those looking for a quick but effective guide.
Duration: 24 minutes
Experience Level: Beginner
Language: English
Price: $19 a month with one-month free trial
Enroll in Find The Perfect Name (Skillshare)
An ambassador of Creative Thinking Mindset, Ilya Lobanov specializes in brand strategy, visual identity, digital strategy, and more.
Branding Essentials can help entrepreneurs with brand naming.
In his Skillshare course titled Branding Essentials, Lobanov discusses basic naming lessons, including naming types, techniques, and importance.
You will also learn more about the relevance of brand positioning, target customers, and competition in creating the perfect name.
The majority of the lessons will be based on Lobanov’s six structured steps, which tackle from analysis, idea generation to registering your brand name, which will pretty much help you in every step of the way -- all of these in just around 30 minutes.
At the end of the course, you’ll be asked to accomplish a worksheet where you can use your newfound knowledge to come up with your business names.
Branding Essentials is the perfect course for entrepreneurs as it covers all the bases and provides a systematized naming process.
Duration: 36 minutes
Experience Level: All
Language: English
Price: $19 a month with one-month free trial
Enroll in Branding Essentials (Skillshare)
The course is taught by Basim Salim, who is a small business and digital marketing expert and has experience working with multinational companies.
An excellent free course accessible to anyone.
Brand Alchemy aims to help all students who enroll in the class develop a brand name that will “stick and sell.”
It introduces techniques that can help ensure that you can create a unique and attention-catching name everyone will remember.
Salim also highlights in the course how a great brand name can effectively improve the value of the brand, products, and services.
He also discusses common mistakes individuals make when thinking of a brand name and how you can potentially avoid them.
Fortunately, this course is free for everyone, which means you don’t even have to spend a penny just to acquire these pieces of information.
Duration: 54 minutes
Experience Level: Beginner
Language: English
Subtitles: English (Auto)
Price: Free
Enroll in Brand Alchemy (Udemy)
Nick Armstrong is an award-winning marketing expert who founded WTF Marketing.
He is also an author and speaker at multiple conferences, including Ignite, TEDx, Startup Week, and PechaKucha.
Naming Basics for Brands is a comprehensive course for business naming.
Armstrong’s goal with Naming Basics for Brands is to provide a fun and engaging course that will help individuals brainstorm brand name ideas.
It presents several case studies to help discuss real-world context involving brand naming for students to understand its relevance better.
There are also multiple exercises within the lessons that will introduce other important information and stimulate your brain to help with idea generation.
The course will also cover the technicalities of trademark and copyright checking before purchasing any domain.
And lastly, for the project, you will be asked to use the 10-minute naming exercise introduced in the course to come up with 3-5 brand names, which you can use for your business.
Duration: 50 minutes
Experience Level: All
Language: English
Price: $19 a month with one-month free trial
Enroll in Naming Basics for Brands (Skillshare)
Xavier Grau Castelló is one of the sought-after pro teachers in Domestika.
He has spent more than two decades of his life mastering the art of naming and has established Nom-Nam, a naming company.
The Art of Name Creation is a must-learn for every entrepreneur.
The Art of Name Creation is a two-hour online course that delves deeper into how brand naming is not a mere task but, in fact, an art.
Castelló explains in detail the complete methodology of naming -- from creating a long list to cutting down short up until you finally decide on one.
He also included several brand-name case studies, each focusing on a specific entity like institutions, companies, professionals, and more.
If you are an aspiring namer, you can also learn from him some tips on how you be one and turn it into your profession.
The Art of Name Creation brings to the table multiple relevant topics that haven’t been tackled in any naming courses in this list.
Duration: 1 hour 57 minutes
Experience Level: Beginner
Language: Spanish
Subtitles: English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, French, Italian, Polish, Dutch
Price: $32.52
Enroll in The Art of Name Creation (Domestika)
Faye Brown is a top teacher in Skillshare who has developed her expertise in branding and typography through her passion and professional experience in graphic designing and art directing.
Beginners in brand naming should check out How To Name Your Brand.
In How To Name Your Brand, Brown discusses one by one ten different directions or types one may opt for when naming their brand or products, including evocative, historical, or even invent a word or use your new name.
Having these essential pieces of information can help beginners choose an approach that they think is best for their business.
The course provides several possibilities and options for entrepreneurs, which may spark several ideas along the process.
In the end, students can use the comprehensive worksheet created by Brown to work on the next steps in developing and finalizing the brand name.
The entire course is only 30 minutes long, suitable for anyone who wants to have an extensive overview of the options you can go with when naming.
Duration: 31 minutes
Experience Level: Beginner
Language: English
Price: $19 a month with one-month free trial
Enroll in How To Name Your Brand (Skillshare)
A professor and co-author of a couple of branding books, Ignasi Fontvila is a professional brand verbal identity specialist who has worked with Seat, Ruffles, Nocilla, Marcilla, and several other companies.
He has worked as a Creative Director, Managing Director, and Creative Naming Manager at multiple leading companies in Spain throughout his career.
Strategy and Creativity to Brand Naming is the most informative course of all.
Strategy and Creativity to Brand Naming starts with the foundational concepts in brand naming, including the techniques for adequately analyzing brand identity and its importance.
It is divided into five significant lessons: the introduction, what you should learn before naming, the conceptualization phase, the creation phase, and the validation phase.
Aside from the usually detailed methodology of the entire naming process, this course will also tackle the conflicts and potential problems that may arise once you've chosen a bad name.
And in the end, there will be a course project where you can easily apply the naming methodology you just learned in creating a name for a passenger transport service.
In a little bit less than three hours, you'll be able to learn the key information, even beyond the basics, needed to comprehensively create a brand name and identity for your business that is well-researched and thought out.
Duration: 2 hours and 56 minutes
Experience Level: Beginner
Language: Spanish
Subtitles: English, Spanish, Portuguese
Price: $32.38
Enroll in Strategy and Creativity to Brand Naming (Domestika)
Bruna Paz is a professional graphic designer and branding expert with more than six years of experience working with small businesses.
Learn brand naming in just 14 minutes.
A Name For Your Brand is one of the shortest brand naming courses on any platform.
Although it's just a quick course, it doesn't fail to provide enough foundational information you need to get started, including an exercise for your vocabulary.
Aside from learning how to name your brand, you'll also be introduced to brainstorming techniques that can help make the flow of the process faster.
It has even squeezed in effective projects that can guide you in creating a powerful name for your business or your products.
This course is the best, and fastest course entrepreneurs or any individual can take if they're in a rush to come up with a name or just don't have the patience to watch an hour-long course.
Duration: 14 minutes
Experience Level: Beginner
Language: English
Price: $19 a month with one-month free trial
Enroll in A Name For Your Brand
Carlos Cornejo is a professional naming specialist and marketer who could cofound Secretname, the first-ever naming studio in Mexico.
Learn about brand naming creatively with Secrets of Naming.
Cornejo shares his expertise in brand naming with the Secrets of Naming as he uncovers a series of steps necessary to develop names.
Students are expected to grasp the relevant information needed early in the process, including the difference between the name and the brand.
It also provides practical techniques, which can be used for information collection, conceptualization, and creation.
Furthermore, this course will also guide you through obtaining legal rights for your chosen brand name and avoiding any commercial conflicts along the way.
All of these are presented creatively that will keep students engaged and interested and also spark their creativity.
And most of all, you can guarantee to learn a structured and proven methodology to develop the right name for your brand.
Duration: 1 hour and 52 minutes
Experience Level: Beginner
Language: Spanish
Subtitles: English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, French, Italian, Polish, Dutch
Price: $14.55
Enroll in Secrets of Naming (Domestika)
This list of 10 brand and business naming courses can cater to anyone with any level of industry expertise.
So whatever position you’re in, you can surely find a naming course for you.
Choosing which one of these you will enroll in depends on the amount of time you’re willing to allot in taking lessons and how much you want to spend on one course.
Overall, Scott Lancaster’s Find The Perfect Brand Name in 5 Simple Steps guarantees practical information and positive results in just an hour.
But if you want a more in-depth course, enroll Ignasi Fontvila’s Strategy and Creativity to Brand Naming.
Remember that these online courses serve as guides that will make brainstorming faster and easier, but in the end, you’re the one who has to generate the perfect name for your brand.
You have to keep the passion going and remain open-minded as you go through any of these lessons.
Did I miss something?—Leave a comment below.
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I'm a branding expert and graphic designer based in NY. I specialize in the development of brands: brand strategy, identity & web design. Need help with your project?—Get in touch
