Animated Logo Elements (Design B5)

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Project Introduction

This project is meant to do two things: First, it is meant to teach you about Keyframes and Animation from a Photoshop file. Secondly, we need to think about our logo design in a whole new way… motion. You will create an endlessly looping gif animation that uses one or more logo elements for your design brief that fits with your current branding, and also expands it. The direction of this design should be subtle, clean and not to “giffy” looking.

You can either use a Video Timeline with Keyframes, or Frame Animation from layers. That choice is up to you, and depends on what your final design is aiming to be.  Some of the more challenging parts will be exporting your assets from Illustrator in an animation friendly way for Photoshop, but if you think about HOW you will animate, it will make things easier.

For this project, we will not worry about file optimization (which, in the real world is a big, big concern… but we will get to that later…). We want a 1080x1080px large animation that the client will love, and THEN we will worry about how to optimize it’s size and load time. You can use between 30-60 frames per second (fps) depending on your desired output. Keep in mind that the animation needs to somehow fit with your current branding idea, and should be subtle and loop seamlessly.

“The entire point of this process in to showcase your own ability to listen to what the client wants, and still give them what they need.  This part of the process can absolutely be grueling, so buckle up.” – GD

Sample Animated Logo

I chose to animate the Icon of the logo, with a simple set of twists that remind me of a camera shutter opening and closing.  I also made mine only 2 seconds long (though you could use up to 5).  My sample isn’t very creative, but it does meet all the minimums specifications, and I would give myself about an 80% for this project.  I mean, sure… it’s CORRECT but is it AWESOME?

Logo-Icon-Animation-DigitalMediaMultimediaDesign-GabrielDamato-McFatterTechnicalCollege-SampleProject-01

Project Requirements & Helpful Links

  • You will submit an looping animated GIF that is 2-5 seconds long for your Design Brief that uses one or more Logo Element (Icon, Monogram, Wordmark or Logo).
  • TEST, TEST, TEST!
    • The image should load in a Google Chrome window, and loop seamlessly and continuously. Drag your exported GIF into an empty Chrome window, to see if it plays the way you want it to in the browser.
  • Things to consider in your project are creativity, uniqueness, smoothness of animation and of course, does it FIT your branding?

 

Project Grading Rubric

The final grade for this project will include your Creativity, Execution and Technical perfection. The grade for your design could be a mix of multiple things that made it higher or lower, an not just one thing.  Additionally, this is a test of how well you added motion graphics into the Brand Development you have been building, and whether or not it fits with the rest of your design endeavors.

AMAZING
90-100		 GREAT
80-89		 GOOD
70-79		 SUB PAR
60-69		 POOR
<60
You did an amazing job of using simple tools to create an awesome logo animation, and executed all the requirements perfectly. Your idea and execution was good, but you missed something either creatively or technically.  Still a decent job though. Sure, you covered the basics and requirements, but the end product wasn’t amazing or particularly strong or creative at all. Student followed most of the directions, but produced an animated GIF that was below what would be considered industry ready. Student did not follow directions, didn’t demonstrate proper use of the tools, or did a far below average job creatively.