Mind Animation Guidelines & Motion Toolkit

Created whilst I was an in-house Motion Designer at Buff Motion


After their rebrand, Mind were keen to create new animated content to use across their socials, but were unsure how to use their brand in motion. They could see the value in using animation, for its ability to tell stories, talk about sensitive topics and drive change. They wanted to achieve consistency across their content and include animation as part of their brand guidelines. That's where Buff came in! As a team we worked closely together to write, design and execute a set 
of animation guidelines and a customisable toolkit, with all users, projects and budgets catered for.

This was a great team collaboration and I'm proud to have been a part of it!

Below shows my contribution and the project montage I put together.

Character Design

One of the first stages, was our research into the current animations produced by Mind. We could see they've used character animation in the past, which is a great tool to tell stories on sensitive topics. However, they needed this in their new branding with more consistency. I designed and animated a new set of characters, to be be used across Mind's animated content, purposely keeping them simple and engaging. It was important to make them relatable, with no indication of age, ethnicity or gender.

The hand-drawn lines and textures go hand in hand with Mind's illustrative style and soften the tone. 
They were delivered fully editable, as part of the toolkit, ready to be used by Mind or future motion suppliers.
Characters in Use

We provided Mind with examples of animated content they could use across their socials, dependent on the tone, budget 
and production time. Here is a couple of the examples that I designed and animated, using the new set of characters. 
The aim was to keep them simple and create a soft, calm tone.
Other Animation Examples

I also created these examples. The left is to show how Mind's illustration style could appear in motion. The right is a way to incorporate animated accents with type, for content needed to be produced quickly for reels and stories.
Motion Toolkit

Here is a selection of assets, including accents, punctuation, textured backgrounds and Mind's supersquiggles, that I animated and feature in the motion toolkit we delivered.
Animation Guidelines

The final stage was to write the guidelines. Here's a selection of my contribution.

more down here ↓