What is a logo animation? 

Usually when you see a logo it’s static and takes the form of an image, wordmark, or emblem. Or a combination of these. A logo animation is likely exactly what you think of when you hear the term. A logo with effects and animations added. These range from simple dynamic effects to complete short video presentations. It just depends on how they will be used.

What kind of logo animation do you need? 

The type of logo animation(s) that you create for your brand will depend on a few things. A shortlist of these factors includes:

• Your niche and brand personality
• Your business goals
• The logo animation’s placement

You may want to have multiple logo animations on hand if you’ll be using them in different placements and with different audiences. Or simply variations that are faster or slower. Whatever your needs, working with a professional design service is a great idea to ensure that you get high-quality outputs. Especially in the early stages when you’re needing to see multiple iterations to figure out which will perform best for your brand. Kimp Video offers subscription video design, for a flat monthly fee. And many of our clients use the service to get logo animations, as well as the marketing videos that they include their logo animations in.  

What are the perks of a logo animation? 

Broadly speaking a logo animation can help you with brand recognition and engagement. But let’s break that down further and look at some of the specific perks of getting a logo animation:

Engaging customers

An animated logo will get the attention of your potential customers. And hold it for much longer than a static logo will. The more creative you get with the animation, the more you can count on your audience appreciating that creativity. And feeling curious about the content you’re sharing. 

Creating and enhancing brand awareness

For any brand, increasing brand awareness is an important goal. Since animated logos are better at engaging consumers, they also ensure that more people associate your logo with your brand. And in turn the different products, services and marketing messages that you share. A logo animation serves as a bit of emphasis, just like an exclamation mark.   

Conveying brand personality 

Logo animations help further your efforts to build an emotional connection and relationship with your customer. This can be achieved through a combination of effects, animations and music or sound effects. To this end you can even consider coming up with a marketing video that shares the story behind your logo, so that your logo animation is that much more meaningful. 

Generating higher ROI

The more people engage with your brand, the higher ROI you’ll see in your marketing. This is because your bounce rates will be much lower, if your audience finds your content to be engaging. And this means that they’ll stick around long enough to learn more about what you have to offer. 

Showing off your creative side

A logo animation lets your brand’s personality shine. With the options to add a wide range of effects and animations, your logo animation can help your potential customers get a sense of your brand in seconds. And this is crucial considering how much content is competing for their attention.

How to use a logo animation in your marketing

Video content spans all different types of digital marketing. And this means that there are a ton of different potential placements for your logo animation. 

Social media 

Social media is an incredibly important tool to promote your product or service. Consumers not only tend to discover new products and services there. They’re also more likely to purchase from brands that they follow. By incorporating a logo animation into your video content, you’ll leverage the power of consistent branding to increase brand awareness. In addition, animated logos can also be converted to GIFs and/or incorporated into GIFs. So don’t just limit your logo animation to paid ads. You’ll be able to incorporate them into organic posts as well. 

Your website or landing page 

Your website is a primo piece of real estate in your digital marketing landscape. Adding a logo animation placed on your site can help with reinforcing your branding, and decreasing bounce rates as well. When your site visitors watch your logo animation, they will automatically be spending more time on the page. This indicator alone has a massive impact on your SEO rankings. 

In presentations 

Do you deliver product or service demos? Or have explainer videos that break down what you have to offer, or how to use your product or service? In all these scenarios and more, a logo animation can help you tie in the information that you’re presenting to your brand. And this is important when we consider that consumers are often weighing and evaluating their options simultaneously. By making sure that they know what sets you apart from others in your niche, you increase the likelihood of earning their business.

In promo videos 

Promo videos can span a wide range of topics. You could be promoting a product launch or a service expansion, an upcoming event, or a recap, or a sale that’s around the corner. Whatever your promo videos are about, make sure to add in your logo animation. This ensures that even if the content in your videos change, your audience knows which brand is presenting it to them.  

Digital OOH ads 

Digital out-of-home ads refer to ads shown on screens in public spaces. This could be at a bus shelter or station, or outside of a shopping complex. Regardless of the placement, these banners target audiences that are physically in close proximity. And so they are relatively easy to engage with an ad that incorporates a logo animation. Or even just a logo animation to raise brand awareness.

YouTube videos 

Branding your videos is important, regardless of what marketing channel we’re talking about. And on YouTube, where audiences are more likely to tune in for longer, you can try using longer animated logos in the intro or the outro of your video. When the watch time on your videos increases, their performance within the YouTube algorithm will also increase. And this in turn will have your videos ranking higher in search results. There’s also the benefit of an added sense of professionalism that comes with a video that includes a high-quality logo animation. This can go a long way with potential customers, sponsors, and partners.

Best practices for your logo animation

Now that you have an understanding of the benefits, and use cases, for logo animations, let’s take a look at best practices. Of course these can vary a bit from logo to logo. But we’ve pulled together some of the most important considerations to keep in mind across the board. 

Get your intro and outro just right 

First impressions count now more than ever before. Social media and other marketing channels are oversaturated. And consumers have shorter attention spans as a result. So you need the beginning of your videos to be highly engaging and for your closing to reinforce the value you’re offering. If you choose to include a logo animation at the start of your video, keep it short and engaging. And regardless of whether you use a logo animation as an intro, the opening of your video should be visually stimulating. This can be achieved through captivating images, elements, music, and/or a combination. 

Throughout your video place your logo in either one of the top corners to avoid collisions with subtitles. If you’re not using subtitles, you can also consider one of the bottom corners. Opt for wherever you logo will stand apart. And size it so that it won’t pull too much focus from the main headline and message.

Then, ind your video down with a call-to-action, and your logo animation (if you haven’t already used it in your intro). The exception to this would be long-form video content, in which your audience will likely not have your logo animation top of mind by the time they reach the end of your video. As most marketing videos are on the shorter side (1 minute or less), having your logo animation as the intro or the outro can be enough to make an impact.

Not too long, not too short

How long should your logo animation be? Well, let’s start with a couple other questions. What’s your goal with your logo animation? And what formats will it be used in?

• For brand awareness, keep it as short as possible. This means 5 seconds or less.
• To reinforce brand personality, and incorporate more into the animation, aim for up to 10 seconds.
• For animations that come in the GIF format, the ideal length would be limited at just under 5 seconds. 
• If you want to use the animation to brand your social media videos, aim to keep it within 3-10 seconds.

Tailor it to your brand

Your logo animation should be aligned with your brand’s personality. And its mission, vision, and values. This could mean using color psychology to play up colors in your logo that are tied to certain ideas. It could also mean incorporating different elements and animations before your logo appears on screen. Or to emphasize different portions of it. By customizing your logo animation you will also have the added advantage of being able to differentiate yourself from your competitors. So look to how you can play up your brand, and also how you can make it stand apart. And if you’re not exactly sure, that’s where relying on an experienced design helps.

Get your dimensions right 

If your logo animation is too small it could appear unclear or illegible. If it’s too big, without enough negative space, it could appear cluttered. Be sure to give your designer context as to how your logo animation will be used. This will allow them to create it accordingly. And this will also be helpful if you’ll need the video file in a few different sizes. For maximum versatility, across channels, secure your logo animation in these files sizes:

• A rectangular output at 1920×1080. The 16:9 resolution will give you a high-quality output to work with across many placements. 
• A square output, with a minimum of 800×800 pixels. 

Think about the shades and tints used 

If your logo has a lot of different colors, shades and tints, incorporating them into an animation can be tricky. In a logo animation they may not all be visible in each frame. So, it may actually be ideal to animate a version of your logo that has very few colors (e.g. 2). Even a black and white version of your logo which seems deceptively simple, could be very impactful once animated. 

Get your designers to test different variations to see which one stands out the best. If you do decide to go ahead and animate a multicolored logo, scale it down to the smallest it can be without sacrificing visibility. And ask your designer to try adjusting the opacity (65% to 90% is often used) to see how different variations look. 

Get your logo animated 

Your logo plays such an important role in creating and increasing brand awareness with your potential customers. And reinforcing it and building relationships and loyalty with existing customers. So don’t leave it in just its static form to fend for itself in the wild, wild, west of digital marketing. Get a logo animation, and you’ll be getting a bigger ROI on your marketing in no time.