Animation is huge for engaging your audience. We regularly see motion graphics and visual storytelling captivating audiences across all types of screens. The amount of investment that goes into many of these productions produces a genuine wow factor and adds credibility to brands and businesses alike. It's amazing how much it's being used, from the classic Red Bull advertisements, to high profile emotive productions such as the 2013 John Lewis Christmas ad that helped the brand gain significant exposure.
When adopting animation of any kind into a marketing campaign, it is important that it aligns with core brand values and guidelines - as they play a vital role in connecting with the audience. With animation continuing to grow more popular for captivating people's attention, how you implement your brand identity has become more critical than ever. Applying a brand style with thought and consideration ensures your message resonates with your target audience. Let's take a deeper dive into this area with a focus around animation in particular.
What are the Key Elements of Brand Guidelines for Animation?
So, how do you incorporate critical brand elements into an animation? There are a number key areas for consideration:
Logo: Use the logo precisely as the brand guidelines show - appropriate size, correct alignment, and clear space surrounding the logo are just some of the key things to consider. This helps cement recognition and visibility.
Use of colour: Adhere to the colour palette that defines your brand. Doing this consistently helps to make a brand more memorable.
Fonts: Use the correct fonts, sizes, and styles laid out in guidelines for all text elements. Consistent typography is crucial for any brand identity.
Brand assets: Any icons, graphics, and illustrations must align with your brand's visual style and ethos. Keep shapes, textures, and other design details cohesive.
Animation Style: Does your brand prefer fast and dynamic animations? Or slow and descriptive? Capture that feeling through the animation style.
Sound Design: Music and SFX choices should evoke the tone and emotion that suits your brand.
Each one of these elements should work cohesively to form a unified brand animation. Ultimately we want viewers to recognise the brand within seconds just by the colours, logo, fonts and illustrative style shown. Keeping it consistent across videos will reinforce brand recognition.
What are the Challenges in Adhering to Brand Guidelines in Animation?
Sometimes brand guidelines can make an animator's job more challenging. A few key aspects that can arise:
Creative limits: Guidelines might seem too rigid, limiting how creative and outside-the-box you can be with your animation style. The trick is finding ways to adhere to the guidelines while still injecting unique flair.
Multi-platform output: Optimising content for different platforms like Instagram or YouTube can mean tweaking animations…which can impact consistency. It's a balance of tailoring content while preserving core visual brand elements across platforms.
Styles that stray: Diverse animation styles can be creative - but it is important not to drift away from the rules around your brand identity. Focus on ways to bring in visual interest whilst remaining true to the essence of the brand.
With some strategic creative thinking and keeping the core visual elements locked in, you can meet these challenges and create impactful animations that align perfectly with guidelines.
Expert Insights: How to Ensure Brand Consistency in Animation
Creating engaging animation that aligns with brand guidelines requires focus, experience and attention to detail. Partnering with a professional animation company can help a great deal with a number of key benefits:
Brand experience: They have a deep understanding of the role guidelines play in connecting with audiences.
Efficiency and productivity: Experts can seamlessly navigate production challenges while consistently applying branding assets across animation scenes.
Innovation and creativity: Professionals find inventive styles that make your brand stand out...while never compromising on your core visual identity.
To uniquely express your brand's essence while keeping recognition strong, it makes good sense to use animation experts.
Conclusion
Having clear, consistent brand guidelines woven through your animated content adds value and builds trust. It cements brand recognition in viewers' minds, connects people back to your core stories and values, and ties everything together seamlessly.
Guidelines can get tricky with constraints on creativity, multi-platform publishing needs, and resource bottlenecks. But solutions exist too, working with partners that not only have the creativity to dream up visually stunning content but also understand the importance of your brand guidelines and tone of voice. When both soaring imagination and solid consistency combine, you can create an animation that uniquely represents your brand.
As you venture into creating animated content for your brand, consider partnering with professionals like Vivid Studio, who excel in engaging, informing, and inspiring audiences while adhering to your unique brand identity. Contact us today for a free consultation on what we can do for you and your business.
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