Animated Logos: The Final Frontier

We live in an exciting era for companies looking to invigorate their logo design, and to a larger extent their entire brand. Before the advent of multimedia advertising, trying to get a service like an animated logo design was a privilege available only to those with seemingly unlimited marketing budgets. You could use a large animated billboard (like the famous Coca-Cola in Times Square), or you could hire an animation studio to create a commercial for TV. Both these are indeed as expensive as they sound. Of course you could always draw your logo on various flip cards and make the customer watch you flip through the pictures as you make your logo move.

Now with new media, animated logos are a relatively inexpensive and viable option. They can give your company a modern look and feel. As the logo works through its three-dimensional route, the customer will think that this is a company on the cutting edge. What better way to show the global capabilities of your company than to have your logo moving about itself like a planet on its axis. And like the earth, these animated logos can have a gravitational pull, drawing the eye to the logo and letting it sit there as it virtually breathes, giving the logo a new life.

The problem with animated logos is that used incorrectly or without proper placement, they become more of a hindrance than a help. One can get the feeling that they’re in some kind of horrible discotheque rather than a professional website. It is a rather precarious balance between drawing in a viewer and repelling a viewer.

To draw the viewer the animated logo must be placed prominently but not in the way of any information. The colors and shape of the logo should blend well with itself and the rest of the site. With an animated logo you also have the option of sound which adds a whole new wrinkle to the experience. The animation could either be used as flash intros, banners, animated gifs. The options are vast and should not be overloaded.

Less is more with animated logos.

If you’re advertising on the web, animated logo design is an interesting and inventive way for your company to stand out above the fray.