Animating Logos

Animating logos is one of the more interesting aspects of what I do here at Blueprint. It isn’t as difficult, from a technical perspective, as creating a full-fledged animated explainer video, but from a creative perspective, it is a major challenge. One of the bigger difficulties is avoiding repetition. With animation, it can at times be a huge temptation to take the easy route and reuse an old idea, especially when you’re key-framing complex motion for individual elements within a logo. But this inevitably leads to a sort of creative “plateau,” where the logo simply disguises a repetitive theme, with the worst result being that, since you haven’t made the effort to push yourself, you don’t notice the repetition and therefore can’t imagine a different way to animate. Of course pushing yourself is difficult precisely because it is often shrouded in the unknown, as if you’re walking along a path and suddenly come across a cloud with no idea whether the path continues on or ends at a cliff-edge. But that is, I think, part of the ups and downs of creative work; one of the most awesome feelings is pushing yourself into new territory and hearing an exclamation of amazement from someone who sees the finished product.

One of the most helpful things I have learned and benefited from is the practice of frequent referencing. Any artist worth his salt knows the value of reference material, but for me, realizing that it’s not just the act of looking at something for inspiration or insight, but returning to that thing often, consistently and without shame that makes the difference between a good animation and a better one.