10 Ways to Use an Animated Logo
A well crafted animated logo is a great asset for your brand. If you’re wondering how to make the most of your freshly made moving logo, I have some suggestions for you.
Instagram - This is the perfect place to show off your new animated logo. Everyone is looking for something visually interesting on Instagram. Show em what you got. Pro tip: Render your video just a little bit too long and trim it back to the looping frame inside of Instagram. You can find a more detailed set of instructions here.
Intro to videos - Putting a short animated logo at the beginning of videos you produce can help build brand recognition. Just make sure it is short. No one wants to sit through a long animation.
Outro - The same applies to the end of your video. A short animation of your logo can delight your audience.
Lower thirds - This is the graphics that shows people’s names and jobs at the bottom of the screen. If your logo is animated, it could definitely be part of the lower thirds graphics.
Thumbnail during video - Another way to delight the viewer and enhance your brand is to have a very subtle, small animated logo in the corner of your videos. Don’t continuously loop your animation. Animate it in, let it sit there for a while, then animate it out. I would suggest keeping this instance of the logo black or white (depending on if the video content is dark or light) and keep it at 25% opacity. The point is to keep it on screen, but subtle.
GIF on your website - The best place for this is the header logo. It plays through once and stops. It's quite delightful and eye catching, but it's not distracting because it stops after playing through once. A great example of this is my motion buddy David Stanfield’s site.
Pinterest - Slap that puppy up on Pinterest. In fact… tweet at me when you do. I’ll pin it to my Animated logo board :)
Dribbble - One of the best homes for looping animated GIFS is Dribbble.
Facebook - Post on your brand page or show it off in your favorite groups!
Twitter - Twitter auto plays videos and animated GIFs, so you could use either.
Bonus: Digital Billboards (Times Square) Times Square would be the ultimate non-internet location of your animated logo. I love this Dunkin Donuts animation in NYC.
This should give you a great idea of how you can make the most of your animated logo.
If you have any other ideas or suggestions, hit us up on Twitter or Instagram.