Mind Animation Guidelines
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!
See the full project here
Below are some of the bits I worked on and the project montage Abraham and 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.
Mind Wellbeing Advisers
An added bonus was that after we had delivered the guidelines, Mind commissioned Buff to create an explainer video for a new service they were offering, called Wellbeing Advisers. This was a fun chance to put the guidelines to the test and see the characters in action.
Credits
Made in-house at Buff Motion
My role: design, animation and writing the guidelines
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lilyscott.co.uk