Figma Essential Training vs Strategy-Based Brand Identity Design

The course covers Figma essentials — file setup, frames, shapes, text, images, masks, layers, components, constraints, and a basic interactive prototype — in a logical, tightly paced sequence. The 2025 edition adds a section on Figma AI features, which reviewers welcomed. However, at 1h 37m it is genuinely thin: auto layout, variables, design systems, and developer handoff are absent. Multiple independent reviewers flag it as a starting point that must be supplemented, not a complete Figma education.

Garrick Chow spent over 15 years as a Senior Staff Instructor at LinkedIn Learning (formerly Lynda.com), authoring more than 200 video-based courses covering Adobe Creative Cloud, productivity tools, and design workflows. Learners across platform reviews consistently describe the teaching style as clear, demo-driven, and accessible without oversimplifying. The course's 4.7-out-of-5 star rating across nearly 7,000 learner ratings is a strong signal of execution quality at the instructor level.

LinkedIn Learning costs $29.99/month or $239.88/year (effective $19.99/month annually) as a standalone subscription; it is also included in LinkedIn Premium Career ($29.99/month) and available free via many public library cards. For learners who already have a LinkedIn Premium subscription, the course is essentially free and excellent value. For learners paying the standalone fee just for this course, the value is weak — 1h 37m of content at $29.99 for a single month is expensive per learning-hour compared to an equivalent Udemy course. The subscription unlocks 20,000+ other courses, which changes the equation significantly for prolific learners.

The course builds toward a functional multi-screen prototype using a restaurant app scenario, with one exercise file provided. Reviewers appreciated leaving the course with a completed mini-project. However, the exercise is instructor-led and offers limited creative latitude — learners replicate the instructor's screens rather than designing their own concept. For portfolio purposes, the output requires significant additional work to be genuinely presentable.

The skills taught — frames, components, constraints, basic prototyping — are genuinely foundational and immediately transferable to real Figma workflows. Reviewers confirm that even the older 2021 version's workflow concepts remain valid today because Figma's underlying design model has not changed. The main gap is that workplace Figma usage involves auto layout, design tokens, branching, and dev mode handoff, none of which the course covers.

Fifteen lessons and 1h 59m cover brand strategy, discovery workshops, competitive research, positioning, and a full visual identity system — logo, colour, typography, and pattern. The strategic framework is clear and genuinely useful. The trade-off: at under two hours the execution depth per topic is limited; reviewers consistently describe it as a conceptual map rather than a deep technical masterclass.

Kevin Craft brings genuine industry authority — clients include The North Face, Cisco, and PepsiCo. Reviewers praise his professional clarity, calm pacing, and the willingness to teach the client-facing and pitch dimensions of brand work. The professional credibility translates into lesson content that feels like real studio practice rather than classroom theory.

One-time purchase of roughly $19.99 (frequently discounted) with lifetime access and 15 additional resources. Good value for the strategic framework; less so if you expect technical depth on any single skill. The brevity means the knowledge-per-minute ratio is high but the breadth of coverage is narrow.

Students build a single complete brand identity system — logo, colour palette, typography, and pattern — from discovery through pitch. One polished deliverable is useful for a portfolio but limits the breadth of practice that a multi-project course would offer. No software instruction is included.

The strategic framework — discovery, competitive research, positioning, and pitch — is directly what studios and freelancers use in client engagements. Reviewers who already have design tool skills consistently describe the course as filling the business-side gap their visual education left open.