Motion Graphics Services

Motion graphics design is essentially graphic design that moves. Think of shapes, colours, logos, elements. Animation is much more complex, often character-based.

In the traditional sense, animations were hand drawn, frame by frame. There were analogue motion graphics computers that created visuals without digital technology - like the Scanimate computer system. However, this was extremely cutting edge technology developed in the 1960s-1980s, and its use cases were extremely rare. Modern animation no longer has to be drawn frame by frame (although it can be: see Cel animation).

Put simply, people don’t read things anymore. In fact, one step further, people can’t read things anymore. There are various sources and statistics on attention spans, but the consensus is that everyone's attention is getting shorter. Not only that, but competition for your audience's attention is greater than ever. Because of this, corporate motion graphics have some great advantages. Firstly, it can tell a story which is far more captivating than simply being told something. Secondly, through great design, we can produce interesting visuals to hold attention, and remain memorable in people’s busy days and lives. 

The motion graphics benefits? It could be greater conversion rates on social media advertising. It could be adding to your brand's perception in the marketplace through premium videos and design. It could be reducing bounce rates on your website and making the SEO algo’s happier with the time people are spending on your pages. It could be helping employees to actually understand important messaging that needs to be digested, rather than skim read in a company memo. We’ve helped companies use motion graphics for marketing for the above and much more.

There’s no one industry that does better with this than others. However, custom motion graphics work extremely well if you have complex information that you need to make simple for your audience. That could be an internal audience - teaching them about new tools or technologies the business is implementing. Or it could be an external audience - explaining your product or service, or explaining your brand's vision or values.

The time it takes to produce motion graphics design will depend on the complexity of your project. If there’s lots of deliverables spanning different languages, sizes and video lengths, then inherently that will take longer to produce than a single, simple video. We typically say 8 weeks is a sweet spot as it gives roughly a week for the creative tasks, giving you enough time to digest the work, align internally, provide any feedback, and then move on to the next task. We have worked at much shorter timelines, even providing a same-week turnaround in some instances, but like anything and everything, no two projects are identical. 

Feel free to give us a call, or drop us a message, and we can advise how long we think a project may take, or if we can meet a specific deadline you may have (9 times out of 10, we can!).

In short, no. We bring technical knowledge and expertise to the table. Sometimes we are working with people from creative backgrounds or in creative roles, but often we’re working with people in marketing or communications. You don’t need a creative background to work with us. Our process has been completely designed to guide someone who’s never been involved with corporate motion graphics before through the experience.

Your input is vital for us to create something that is authentic to your business. However, we’re well aware of adding to already busy workloads and creating a burden or bottleneck. Typically we would have 4x 30 minute presentations, plus any additional calls needed for feedback, plus any calls you may have internally to discuss. We’d recommend setting aside 1-2 hours per week for the first half of the project, and then that would reduce in the second half to circa 30-60 minutes.

Every project is completely different, so it’s very hard to answer this in a meaningful way. We’ve had 30 second videos that cost more than 5 minute videos. Absolutely nothing that we do is off the shelf. Everything is completely unique to you, and your project. So even when working on custom motion graphics for the same company, two projects could have completely different costs. Ultimately, we have a fairly simple formula - how complex is the brief multiplied by how quickly it's needed. 

Because of this we create a free, no obligation proposal that will outline at least two, often three, different cost options that would meet your brief. Alongside these costs we provide references to show exactly what that budget would look like. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to get your free proposal today.

Our motion graphics services cover a wide range of styles, depending on the company we’re working with, and what the objectives are. The first thing we do is dictate the scope of work within the budget. With animation we can create anything, so we’re only limited by the budget we need to work within. Once you’ve chosen the cost option that meets your needs, we then create a series of mood boards within that cost bracket that would work for your needs. Once you’ve told us what you like and dislike the moodboards, we create styleframes which are bespoke to your project. We work with you to refine those styleframes with any further changes, and just like that, the style for the animation is set.

Absolutely. We work with many companies who have rigorous brand guidelines that must be adhered to for continuity and to avoid the dilution of their brand. We’re well versed in working within the guardrails dictated by your brand, or looking for ways to use what’s been set out and elevate it. If you don’t have brand guidelines, don’t worry, it won’t stop you from having corporate motion graphics - it just gives us more options at the start of the project.

If you’re using motion graphics for marketing; one of the first questions (and most important ones) is who’s watching this and where. If it’s paid social media, you’ve got just a few seconds to catch someone's attention and keep them watching - we’d recommend 15 seconds or less. If it’s organic social media, then you’ve still got just a few seconds to catch their attention, but you can run longer due to your existing audience. On a website homepage, 30-60 seconds to deliver everything someone should know about you. On a product or service page, potentially 90-120 seconds depending on what you’re selling and to who. In training contexts, you can run much longer. We’ll work with you to advise best practises and our recommendations on what you should say and for how long.

The standard file format for a motion graphics video is MP4. This has been designed to deliver the best compression algorithms to balance quality with file size. There is the odd occasion where we’re asked to deliver Pro-Res / MOV formats with specific encodings, but this is usually for events or audio visual software. No matter the file format we would deliver in, they’re created the same way. If you do have a specific requirement, let us know as part of our briefing process and we’ll ensure we can deliver exactly what you need.

In terms of process, there is no difference in motion graphics services for social media vs a website. The differences would be the length, the information shared, the tone, and so on. Because of this, we have a detailed briefing process to understand exactly what you’re trying to do, and who is the main target audience of this. We’re well versed in creating motion graphics for all sorts of reasons, platforms and companies. It’s all we do.

As part of our motion graphics process we provide script writing services, and will always recommend using our script writers who have vast experience writing for animated videos. We’re thinking about line lengths, how text will sound through a voiceover, what text needs to be on screen, what story we're telling, what order the information needs to be delivered, and much more. Our recommendation would be to come with lots of materials for us to chop and choose from. The more information we have at the start, the better outcomes we can make. 

However, we do work with companies who have their own scripts.

There is no silver bullet to things in life. If one was vastly superior to the other in all situations then the other wouldn’t exist. We’re obviously a bit biassed being a dedicated motion graphics studio, but we believe that motion graphics are the way forward. You don’t need large film crews, you don’t need sets or locations, actors, catering, hair and makeup, and you don’t need to work around the British weather. We also love how easy motion graphics are to update with new information, and how easy they are to roll-out across suites of products or services.

What makes us different from our competitors is that we are ISO 9001 certified. It’s not something you often see in the creative industry. It means we’ve been audited and inspected by a third party and we meet all the necessary requirements to be awarded an ISO accreditation. The 9001 mark is for project and quality management. Our process is held to a higher standard. It’s been stress tested. There are fail safes to stop things going wrong.

Why is this important to us? Because deadlines matter to our clients. Often, our services are used in a wider context, like a new website, a trade show, a product launch, etc. Our clients use us over our competitors because they trust they will get something highly brilliant, highly creative, that meets the brief perfectly, but that is going to arrive on time and on budget. No slippages. No missed phone calls. Brilliant delivery, every time.

This is where motion graphics are extremely beneficial. We often create a series of videos that tie in together. These could be for different target audiences, different products or services, different purposes. It also becomes more cost effective as we set the style for the series once, and then create multiple videos, bringing the cost per video down.

Yes - we keep all our project files backed up and ready to go should you need a line of text updating, a new logo inserting, or an image refreshed. A brilliant benefit of motion graphics is that they’re a lot more timeless than their live-action counterparts, and it’s extremely easy (and cost-effective) to update them.

It depends on the objectives at the start of the animation. It’s hard to measure things like brand perception or awareness. It’s easy to measure things like click-through rates on social media paid advertising. We’ll always ask the question at the start to see if there are specific KPIs to hit, or how we could measure success for the project. For a lot of our clients success is satisfied stakeholders, timely delivery and keeping on budget.

In an increasingly digital world, there are more and more touch points which offer motion graphics benefits. For instance, organic social media, then moving through to a landing page with a motion graphic video at the top. When a prospect has filled out a contact form, an automated email is sent with a link to an eBook with a motion graphics video embedded. There’s lots of ways to integrate into your strategy, and there’s lots of ways to take a single video and adapt it to different usages. In the above example, the landing page video could be 90 seconds with various information on the product/service, the company, the reason why someone might choose you over a competitor, and some social proof. This could be split into separate parts, and you promote individually on social media organically. You can create brilliant evergreen content as a secondary objective, and get a huge amount of value out of what is at the start, a single video.

The more information you have the better! As you might imagine, knowing we’re targeting 18-25 year old female Americans with a college degree, who are looking to take a holiday to Europe over the summer period is much more useful than knowing we’re targeting summer holidays to Spain. The more information you can provide over the who, the what, the why, the where, the when and the how, the better for everyone involved. You don’t need to write pages and pages of information however. We’ll have a quick 15 minute call, and run through a series of briefing questions. We’ll then summarise and use as our briefing document for your project to then quote on.