In my few years of experience in the design industry, I have noticed that people respond to visuals more than any other format in display. Interactive pictures, short videos, and animations work better than static or simple text in engaging the audience and getting the point across to them.
The same thing can be applied to any professional logo design as well. While static logos are appealing and have their place in design, logos that have motion can set you and your brand apart.
In this article, I will give you some creative and modern ideas for animated logo designs that might help you market your products or services effectively.
Why Go for an Animated Logo Design
To start, let’s just talk about a few reasons for getting an animated logo. While static logos have worked very well for a lot of brands for centuries, modern animated logos will hold today’s tech-savvy audience’s attention on social media and websites. They might be slightly different from minimal logos for startups but can hold their own anywhere.
Different movements, colors flashing and images catch the eye and better hold the viewer’s attention compared to a static image.
Animation also provides more opportunities for creativity. You can add different elements to your text and images to make your brand message prominent, add emphasis or visual motifs, and stylize. This helps the viewer remember who you are and understand what you stand for at a glance.
Animated logo designs are quite good for storytelling. Some of the biggest brands in the world like Burger King, Amazon, and even Google have gone for animations in their logos on various occasions. These companies have managed to highlight their brand stories by introducing movements in their brand identity designs.
People not only see what these brands offer in the animation but also get an insight into how they were created.
12 Ideas for Animated Logo Designs
You can add flashing colors or a fade-away effect to a design using an animation editor. It’s also a good idea to hire graphic designers to create an animated logo that makes your business identifiable instantly. Otherwise, you could also add movement to the lines inside the structure and reveal them one after the other at the end. The final result will be a very appealing animated logo design.
Here are some great ideas that you can take inspiration from and add dynamic effects to your logo or create one from scratch.
1. Popping and Booming Colors
Adding a bit of booming colors with black and white text might be quite an effective way to get the attention of a viewer. You can also incorporate some colors against a dark or neutral background. Whichever way you go, the results are going to be great. Just make sure that you pick colors that complement your design well and are relevant to your brand.
It is a good idea to be familiar with color psychology and the different meanings of colors so you can choose a combination or contrast wisely. Otherwise, the audience may end up confused about what you are trying to convey to them. This animation for a music company is a good example. If you look closely, you will see how the colors overlap and pop out to make the logo design highly engaging.
2. Glitching Effects
One of the best ways to go for an animated logo design is to incorporate a glitching effect (made popular by TikTok) in it. It might take a minute or two for your eyes to get used to the logo design but once you do, the logo could be an instant hit. When images or colors glitch in the animation, it could create a very futuristic effect and give your visual brand identity the extra edge.
Interestingly, quite a few people have attempted to come up with such animations. Just take a look at the logo here, you will see how the creator has managed to highlight their creativity and make it more attractive than a static one.
3. Single Character Movements
The animation can be focused on a character or symbol in the logo design. So if you have an animal, an automotive logo, or various objects in the design, you can animate them instead of all the elements in the graphics. In my opinion, this can make for a very unique logo design as most animated logos have a lot of movements in them.
By animating one or two alphabets into characters, you can have a clean and minimalistic design that doesn’t overwhelm the viewer. You can see this in the animated logo below where only the ‘O’ takes a different form.
4. Rotating Elements
While you might not consider having the text or images rotate in your logo, the animation can make for a good logo animation. You can have a range of different elements explode out of your wordmark that shows your audience what your business is about. Otherwise, there can also be some letters or icons exploding to reveal a catchy tagline.
If you take the example of the animated brand symbol below, you can see how the animation puts on a great show for the viewer. The different colors moving together in a circular motion look highly appealing and can engage the viewer instantly as well. This type of animation could be added to e-commerce logos or streaming app icons.
5. Psychedelic Dance
You might already have an idea about this as it has been done a lot in animation logos. The dancing dots appear in the logo to form a shape then pan out to form wordmark, lettermark or even complete an image. It could be the dot in an ‘I’ that might appear show up at in the beginning of logo animation. If you add the psychedelic dance to your brand identity design, you can make it very appealing for the people.
Take a look at this animation here. The dot shows up at the creates a psychedelic effect that makes up the entire logo from the shapes to the bee and the final design.
6. Nature Imagery
If you have nature imagery in your logo, you can actually do a lot with it in the animation. Elements such as grass, rivers or flowers can have motion to make the logo more appealing and attractive.
You can also go for animating the entire landscape and bringing in all the elements together one by one. It could work very well in environmental care logos and travel logos too.
Personally, one of, my favorites of a logon with nature imagery is of a rising sun. You can see different shades of orange appear and then the rising sun coming out from below. It’s a striking image of the sky lighting up into colors of the sun to reveal the entire logo with the boat sai on the water.
7. Animated Shapes or Objects
One of the most popular examples that I can think of here is the Pixar logo. It is an animation that is recognized all over the most of you will be able to remember it from the old Pixar movies. Remember the jumping lamp that took over the place of ‘I’? Well, if you do then you get the idea behind this one.
Animating a shape or an object from your logo or concept, can make your logo stand out and make it more interesting than others too. In the animation here, you can see something similar with the logo changing into various foods and then turning into the face of a man in a Chinese hat which is the actual logo symbol.
8. Wordmark Animation
This might be one of the simpler ideas but can be quite effective for getting the message across. You can animate the wordmark which will be your brand name in different ways. Make it appear in slow motion or one letter after the other.
You can even reveal the whole wordmark together by creating a writing movement. Other animations to try include fireworks, whiteboard, or dotted bullets forming words. You can include a short GIF or video of the logo on your business website to generate interest among the audience.
Look at the example below and you’ll see how the font is animated in a simple yet creative way.
9. Strokes to Symbol
Now, this might not be everyone’s style but it is a highly useful idea for animating your logo design. There are lots of elements that can make up a brand identity design such as the company name, icons, shapes, objects and sometimes even the tagline. If you think about it, this gives you more room for creativity and opportunities to create an interesting animation.
In the animation below, the design comes together nicely with all the elements forming the complete picture at the end.
10. Optical Illusion
This animation could keep the viewer engaged for a long time and also give them something to talk about. Think of it this way. If your logo design has an optical illusion that keeps the people guessing what it is, then it could make for a great visual brand identity.
I came across one such very interesting animated logo that gave the illusion of being many things. While, to me, it could appear as something as simple as a few lines forming an oval shape, you could see something like a circuit or a maze.
11. Color Change
You can animate the logo to change different colors and add to its appeal. In such an animation, you can fit in various color combinations for the design. Think of ways to make your brand logo with emotionally appealing color palettes. So like the one below, you have the option of adding a range of colors to feature in your animated brand symbol.
12. Combining Pieces
It is quite a dramatic way to bring the logo together and make an impression on the audience. Basly, the animation involves pieces that join to form the complete design. You can have the different elements broken up and then appear one by one to make up the images, text, and icons, or just bring all of them at once.
If you take the example of the animation here, you can see how it can be done. The icon comes together with the name slowly to display the entire logo.
Wrapping Up
With these ideas, you are all set to create your animated logo. You can get a great sports logo, media logo, and entertainment logo that remains in memory and creates a buzz among the audiences too. Before you start working, it’s a good idea to test out potential designs on a small focus group so that you can understand what works for your potential customers.
While animated logos are certainly eye-catching, they may not appeal to everyone. You also have to think about responsiveness, digital-first designs, and elements that can feature on your app or as a favicon.
So brainstorm ideas and add effects to your logo accordingly. You can always introduce movement to the design to mark an event or occasion (just like Google Doodles!) instead of something permanent. Get started now and make a splash in the world of design by creating a unique and engaging design!
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