How to Animate Logo [5 Tools For Animating Logos]

A logo tells the story about your brand, your company’s values, and what you stand for. 

An animated logo does all of the above, plus makes sure your brand stands out.

If you’re wondering how to animate logo, why you should have one, and what tools you can use to do it, read on.

Why Is Logo Animation so popular? 

For the same reason that, for example, TikTok is popular –we’ve reached a point in society where short and eye-catching messages is what grabs our attention. Logo animation enables companies and individuals to raise brand awareness and attract more customers. After all, an animated logo, much like a TikTok video, is flashy, and most often than not, unique.

How To Animate Logo?

Research

You need to conduct thorough research on how logo animation online works before actually creating a logo design. Think about your logo design and how you would like to portray your organisation with the logo. The logo is one of the most crucial elements of branding and it’s important to decide how you want to connect with your audience at the very beginning. 

Preparing the logo

Once you get a rough idea of what your logo should look like, you need to make sure that your logo file is in the right format. Although logo animation software is generally raster-based, the logo source file should be in a vector format. This way the logo won’t lose any qualify during scaling and layering.

Importing the logo into an animation software 

As soon as you import the logo in animation software, you can start experimenting with the design, based on what the program you’re using has to offer. The best approach is to look at every tool at your disposal to ensure you’re not missing out on anything.

Setting up the composition

After you import the files, you need to set up your composition. The composition is a container where you can edit, layer, and apply animations to your logo. 

Animating with keyframes

Keyframes allow you to define the start and the end of the transitions in motion design. A keyframe contains information about a frame’s action at a certain point in time and when the action occurs. To be more specific, to use a keyframe means to animate the position of the logo, use a variety of transitions, and set up layers. 

Animating with shape layers

Shape layers are vector objects with a specific shape that you can create in the composition panel. You first need to convert the logo into a shape layer, so you can work on the animation, and add different attributes for each logo element to achieve better design.  

Adjusting the animation timing

When you animate your logo, it’s important to set the transition timing properly and determine the speed curve of the animation. Adjusting the animation timing will make transitions look smoother and the effects more natural.

Exporting the animated logo

Once you’re satisfied with the final design, all you need to do is export the logo animation and start using it. You can export the animated logo in different formats such as an .mp4 file, GIF, SVG, and others.

Best Ways To Use Logo Animation

• Great for intro or outro videos 

Animated logos are the perfect tool to use at the start and the end of your organisation’s videos. Everyone likes great visual effects and chances are, it will attract more customers to your business.

• Raise brand awareness 

One of the main purposes of a logo is to raise awareness about your brand. It’s also a great way to showcase your graphic identity and attract more customers. Telling your story can also be more effective through your animation.

• Use it in presentations 

You can use animated logos in your slideshows. It can help employees build stronger connections with company values. The same applies when presenting projects and ideas to clients.

• Digital marketing 

Social media is one of the most important tools for a successful digital marketing strategy. Placing your logo on images and videos is one way to make sure your followers remember your logo and know where to look for when in need of a certain product/service.

• Website design 

Websites play a significant role in marketing and they can be one of the best places to engage with your audience. An animated logo will improve the overall look of your website and make it more distinctive. 

• Advertising banners 

Advertising banners can make or break a marketing strategy, a brand’s impression, and online presence. An eye-catching animated logo that’s well-designed will surely increase visitors’ interest and clicking rate.

Best Tools to Create Logo Animation

After Effects

Adobe After Effects is arguably one of the most popular programs for visual effects and motion design. Adobe After Effects has plenty of useful editing features, though designers mostly turn to it to animate an already existing animation (not to create one from scratch). Like most Adobe software programs, After Effects is not beginner-friendly, but you can find many tutorials online on how to animate logo after effects.

Renderforest

Renderforest is a well-known online 3D animation maker. It features plenty of visual effects and more than 800 easily-customisable logo templates (some of which are 4K templates). When it comes to logo animation specifically, Renderforest offers a variety of logo animation designs, such as liquid splash logo, shattering logo, glass logo, fire logo and others. 

Adobe Spark

Adobe Spark is yet another logo animation app that is widely popular for creating custom intro videos. However, many designers use it to make logo animations. They believe that this is the best logo animation app for Android users since  Adobe Spark has a variety of logo and intro templates categorised by tags, different fonts, giving users options to download their finished project in different formats, including .mp4, .mov, and .m4v.

Tube Arsenal

Tube Arsenal is yet another well-liked, online intro maker. It doesn’t require any software download and is one of the most beginner-friendly logo makers. The platform regularly updates and improves its list of logo templates and offers unlimited previews. 

Animaker

Animaker is an intuitive platform for making videos, creating GIFs, and live video editing. It’s a drag-and-drop editor that’s suitable for beginners. The interface of the platform makes it easy for anyone to find their way around it. Animaker is the go-to place for custom character creation but, when it comes to making logos, the platform has basic features, which aren’t advanced enough to build a logo from scratch.

Offeo

Last, but not least, we have Offeo, a simple logo animation software for small businesses and beginners. With its intuitive design, you can adapt fast to the number of features and tools this platform offers all of which are highly customisable. You can choose from a variety of templates and stock photos, colours, and fonts. 

Bottom Line

Creating effective and eye-catching logo designs is not an easy job. But with the right idea, tools, creative mindset, there’s no reason why you couldn’t make good logo animations for your marketing campaign.