Examples of Animated Logos in the Entertainment World
Animated logos are fairly popular method for producing online logos, video logos and even logos for digital signboards. An animated logo goes far beyond the traditional print logo because it takes an initial logo design and turns it into a motion image. The first animated logos came from animated films and from production credits. Although an animated logo may have just a few frames in it, the motion that’s produced can work to emphasize the point that the logo has as well as catch the eye. Only a few companies really have animated logos currently but with the use of Gif images, flash files and the medium of web video more and more companies are utilizing animated logos as part of their marketing technique.
While only a few companies have animated logos as their main logo there are many companies are being forced to follow suit when they produce their own marketing material online especially when it comes to delving into video today. With their growing popularity more and more designers are turning to gif creators and video editing software in order to create the simple animations. Some of the most iconic animated logos currently are the following.
Dreamworks:
The DreamWorks animated logo includes an image of a night sky with the moon prominently displayed in the middle of the screen. This logo often appears before a feature-length film, trailer or during a variety of marketing material for the studio. Dreamworks highlights the moon and night sky by having a young boy perched in the moon casting a fly fishing rod into a puddle that is revealed as the camera pans downward. Dreamworks definitely has one of the most complicated animated logos available right now but the product hasn’t changed since 2010 and shows no signs of changing anytime soon. Dreamworks created an iconic logo with beautiful music to go alongside it. While not every company will have access to these types of studios or budget to create understanding logo, this is a good base mark for what is actually possible with animated logos today.
Walt Disney:
The Walt Disney castle logo has been the same for some time but recently received a facelift in the year 2011. The Walt Disney castle animation logo has been around since the early days of the animation studio. Animators at Disney are perhaps the best in the world and this could be part of the reason why they have created such a timeless image with their castle logo. Disney animators superimposed spellbinding pixie dust in a perfect arc over Cinderella’s Castle in the early animations. Bn the most current rendition of the Walt Disney animated logo the original hand drawn images have been replaced with computer CGI. While the base graphics and animation remain the same that technology has definitely changed and Walt Disney Animated studios built up an animation intro that’s highly shareable and technologically advanced by todays computer generated image standards. The Walt Disney animated logo is often shown before their feature-length films, trailers and in some cases even on the Disney website before certain materials.
BBC Newsbeat:
Other brands are following suit with their own web material as well. Just because you don’t have your own animation studio or a ton of video content, that doesn’t mean that you can’t use an animated logo. BBC newsbeat is one of the industry leaders utilizing animated board marks and .gif files to animate their logo in the top frame of the page. This adds a unique and eye-catching look for their logo which is relatively simple with black and white. The animated technology adds real flair to this logo which is based in simplicity. The best part about .gif files today is that they are becoming more shareable than ever before. Newsbeat can now share these images across social media platforms with confidence that they will display the same and the wordmark displays in most browsers at the top of the BBC newsbeat main page. Using this type of simple yet subtle logo with an animation could be a striking new way to utilize animated logos for the future of design.
Betaworks:
The other fantastic aspect of an animated logo is that the logo to appear out of thin air. This is exactly what Betaworks was able to do with their animated banner ad/top bar logo. This simple red and white design traces out the logo quickly and has the image quickly appear and disappear looking like it’s drawing and erasing itself. Betaworks created an extremely modern and unique take on the animated logo also utilizing the .gif format for mass sharability.
Animated logos may well be the future for design and as more and more designers start to include them in promotional materials and on their websites, the demand for these types of logos may be growing in the near future.
Check out how often you should revamp your logo here!