Introduction

In this lesson, I started the process of creating an animated logo in after effects to be used as branding for myself.

Research

To start, I looked at a selection of animated logos on Dribbble.com and chose a few that I liked. Here are those:

Designing my own

Next, I begun the process of designing my own logo starting by drawing some concepts. They are each numbered in the order that I drew them

As you can see, I started with a more typographic, text-based, simplistic design of my initials AN in square 1.

I then decided to keep the lettering in square 2, this time taking a looser and more illustrative approach to drawing the letters – I ended up adding some flames to make the logo look more interesting.

In square 3, I started by drawing a vaguely N shaped curve, and repeating it inside the square. I thought that it looked like a person with their arms outstretched, and I added an eye and a line to show the body.

In square 4, I took the approach of expanding on square 3, this time drawing the whole person and adding the letter A to create my initials again. I think this character in the logo looks like an alien.

For square 5, I experimented with the design from square 4 but attaching the letters to the character’s body – just to see how it would look.

In square 6, I re-visited the first design, this time using the curves and repeated patterns I drew in the other squares.

My favourite designs were 2, 3 and 6.