Starting summer of 2022, the ICC will be offering a new way for designers and creatives to sharpen their skills and be hyper relevant to what industry is needing right now. The ICC will be offering non-accredited, industry-specific, digital badges in a variety of subjects.

Digital badges are portable and publishable indicators of an accomplishment, learned skill, or interest that is earned and validated by an entity with expertise and credibility in that field. Badges are being adopted by corporations, associations, institutions, and training organizations to respond to market demands.

"Our value proposition has always revolved around excellent student experiences, industry relevance, and career preparedness, and being able to offer these alternative learning platforms puts the student in charge of how deeply they want to go into preparing for a specific industry," said Tom Balliett, ICC Co-founder, Instructor and CFO.

"We are so proud at how competitive our graduates have become in the marketplace, but that has come through constant improvement in our curriculum and overall program," Balliett added.

The courses will taught in-person at the ICC's studios on the Innovation Campus at Lakehurst in Dublin, Ohio, a northwest suburb on Columbus. Courses will be open to working professionals and anyone from the design community who desires to sharpen their skills. The courses will also be competitively priced to accommodate a wide range of potential students.

"The ICC has access to so many industry experts and they have shaped the direction our first courses will take," said ICC President and Co-founder, Jim Stevenson. "The first round of courses are scheduled to be related to CMF (colors, materials and finishes), industry-specific software suites, technical specifications and manufacturing practices."

Individual courses can be stacked to receive completion badges in various subjects like interior space design and soft goods design. The team is also exploring furniture design and sustainable design.