Business-ready designers and efficient, strategic design operations.
Advance your career from New Designer to Creative Director, equipped with the strategic acumen and emotional intelligence required to lead the modern creative organization.
The Executive Gap in Creative Education
Design education often ends at craft. Wink Academy begins where traditional programs stop—at the intersection of business acumen, executive influence, and strategic change. We teach every designer how to move beyond execution to articulate strategy, drive measurable results, and become an indispensable organizational partner, regardless of their current title.
Wink Academy is built on the 20+ years of dynamic, real-world industry experience of our founder, Craig Edis.
Reframing What It Means to Be a Design Professional
Advancing your career—whether from grad school to your first job, or from Middleweight to an Art Director or Creative Director—is determined by your strategic thinking and quantifiable business impact.
Wink Academy is here to close the gaps that prevent designers at all levels from achieving their full potential:
The Assumption: You are a master of craft, but you struggle to articulate quantifiable business value.
The Problem: You know design principles, but you lack the executive communication frameworks to build consensus.
The Flaw: You struggle to defend your work with data and logic—not just feelings—in the boardroom.
The Risk: You take feedback personally, leading to friction instead of collaborative leadership.
The Secret: You lack the advanced leverage strategies needed to influence the entire business and drive systemic change.
This is the part of your design education that decides whether you lead the transformation or remain the executor of a brief.
Design For Business: The Wink Manifesto
Design is not decoration. It’s a language of profit, influence, and strategic change.
At Wink Academy, we teach you how to move beyond pixels and tactics to think like a strategic partner. We blend design thinking, business acumen, and emotional intelligence to ensure you communicate your value, drive dynamic teaming, and influence outcomes that matter, no matter your experience level.
We turn executors of briefs into interpreters of strategy—professionals who understand the full ecosystem of value creation.
Design for Business
Stop making pretty pictures. Start building business assets. We teach you how to connect every design decision to measurable data and growth, speaking the language of C-suite executives.
Design Leadership
Empathy is a tool. We focus on emotional intelligence (EQ) and positive influence tactics to help you solve organizational problems, manage team complexity, and lead transformation.
Design for Progress
The market waits for no one. We empower you with the professional mindset and radical design leadership frameworks to navigate complexity and contribute from day one.
What Designers Achieve
Graduates of Wink Academy become design professionals who are ready to dictate strategy. Individuals who combine creativity with strategic intelligence. This is where design meets the bottom line.
This is where design meets business and where designers evolve into indispensable professionals.
You will learn to:
Lead with Logic: Confidently use data, process, and logic to defend your solutions and minimize subjective feedback.
Master the Frameworks: Deploy industry-tested systems like to successfully present design solutions with a 95% success rate and the validation anchor to stop subjective feedback in its tracks.
Sell Your Thinking: Understand that your ability to sell is 50% of the work. Learn to structure presentations that lead the client to the solution.
Bring Clarity: Trade chaos for structure, reduce misalignment, and operate with the maturity that bypasses the “Junior” stage.
Build Consensus: Acquire tools for creating a collaborative culture and leading dynamic teaming in rapidly changing environments.
How Wink Academy Differs
Most professional development programs focus on tools or academic theory. Wink Academy focuses on application that equips you to bring tangible business value through your day-to-day work. Our approach is different because you are learning directly from a proven industry leader.
Our approach is different because:
It’s based on 20+ years of active leadership experience—not theoretical research.
We integrate the three disciplines that matter: Business, Psychology (EQ), and Design.
We teach the importance of communication, collaboration, and influence that determine real-world impact.
We empower you to articulate the “why” behind your work, not just the “how”.
The frameworks and techniques we teach are unique to Wink and not available anywhere else. They were developed through years of leading design and product teams, refining processes, and proving that when design thinks like business, it becomes indispensable.
Time Efficiency
Wink courses are designed to be completed in weeks, not years, allowing learners to enter (or re-enter) the workforce quickly.
Massive Cost Difference
Master’s programs can exceed $80K–$100K total; Wink offers comparable value for a fraction of that.
Employer Perception
Employers are risk-averse. They don't just want talent; they want reliability. Wink prepares you to step into a boardroom on Day 1 without needing to be hand-held.
A More Valuable Mindset For Life
No need to give up your day job to advance your career.
Practical vs. Academic
Master’s programs focus heavily on theory and research. Wink focuses on business strategy, collaboration, and real-world skills employers want.
Low Risk, High Value
Wink’s lower cost and shorter duration mean less financial risk and faster returns for both learners and employers.
How Wink Academy Compares
| Criteria | Wink Academy | Bootcamps | University |
|---|---|---|---|
| Primary outcome | Business-ready designers; practical, employable strategic skills | Technical skills | Broad theory and creative foundations |
| What students actually learn | Strategy, business context, stakeholder communication, real-world workflows, design psychology | Tools, prototyping, UI and UX basics | Design theory, research, studio practice |
| Prepared for work immediately | Yes — built for real team expectations and job readiness | Partially | Rarely |
| Depth of business and design application knowledge | High | Low | Very low |
| Practical career advantage | Clear frameworks, hireable soft skills, mindset, project management, presenting designs, collaboration, emotional intelligence | Tools and guided projects | Critical thinking and research skills |
| Who it is for | New grads and designers upgrading value | Career switchers and hobbyists | Traditional theory-focused students |
| Format | Self-paced modules | Cohort-based intensive | Multi-year degree |
| Industry relevance | Practitioner-led, regularly updated | Varies | Often slow to update |
| Cost | Accessible and affordable | Moderate to high | Very high |
| Differentiator | Teaches the business of design to make designers hireable and valuable | Focus on tools | Focus on theory |
Wink Courses: Find Your Pathway
COMING EARLY 2026
Design For Business
NEW DESIGNER EDITION
Your portfolio gets you the interview. This course gets you the job.
Breaking into the industry isn’t about polishing a résumé or tweaking a portfolio anymore. Employers are hiring designers who understand how design drives business results, and who can show the thinking, mindset, and decision-making behind their work.
Design For Business: New Designer Edition gives you that advantage.
This course helps you bridge the gap between school projects and real-world expectations so you can confidently step into interviews, communicate your value, and demonstrate how you apply design in a business context.
You’ll learn how to think like a professional designer, make smarter decisions, and show employers you’re ready to contribute from day one. It’s practical, clear, and built for the realities new grads face right now. Graduates leave with stronger communication, better structure, clearer thinking, and a deeper understanding of how design drives value. They become the kind of designers employers enjoy hiring.
And it’s only available from Wink.
COMING 2026
Design For Business
CAREER LEVEL UP EDITION
Step into the next stage of your design career with confidence.
Moving up in design isn’t just about stronger visuals or sharper craft. To advance into Art Director, Creative Lead, or emerging leadership roles, you need to show you can bring real value to teams, guide others, and make decisions that support the business.
Design For Business: Career Level-Up Edition helps you make that leap.
This course builds the strategic, team-oriented, and project-driving skills that mid-career designers need but rarely get formal training in. You’ll learn how to contribute at a higher level, manage projects with clarity, support junior designers, and position yourself as someone who can lead.
If you’re ready to grow beyond execution and step into influence, this gives you the edge you need — and it’s only available from Wink.
