Bring your brand’s logo to life with these 4 animation tips.
It all starts with great prep!
In order to have the greatest flexibility in animating your logo, make sure each element you want to animate lives on its own layer. Whether you’re transferring a design from Photoshop or Illustrator, After Effects preserves layers when importing a file as a composition.
It’s time to move
Compositions contain layers, and layers are the foundation for your animation. Any layer can be animated using layer properties or effects.
Animate with keyframes
Keyframes record a layer property at a specific point in time and can be recorded on any layer property. For example, you can animate a layer moving left to right across the screen by recording keyframes of its Position property. When you record multiple position keyframes in the timeline, the Composition panel displays the animation path.
You can use the speed and motion of the animation to reinforce the style of your brand.
- Spread out keyframes in the timeline to keep things slow and calm.
- Record keyframes close together to move things along faster and make it exciting.
Loopable backgrounds
You can animate different elements in your design to communicate your brand’s unique feel. For example, add effects to your background layer to create an abstract looping animation without much effort. Fractal Noise and Cell Pattern are great choices for this. Adjust effect settings or even combine effects to create an endless number of interesting backgrounds.