Vucko

This week, we’ll be at DesignThinkers in our home city of Toronto. 🍁 If you’re attending or nearby, we’d love to meet and say hello!

Motion adds meaning. It unifies how identities come alive across all communication channels, adding depth to brand expression. 🤝 To create something truly meaningful, R&D is essential. We can discover distinct attributes that shape a brand’s true identity—moving beyond the surface to reveal the core of what makes a brand impactful. For Back Market, connecting mission and values through purposeful motion was crucial. This created a cohesive, meaningful ecosystem, brought to life through a redesigned visual identity by Studio Herrström and the In-House Design Team, led by Victor Antonelli. Every movement matters when building a seamless and unified brand experience. 💜

If your work doesn't evoke a reaction, is it really making an impact? As Luis Iglesias, Group Creative Director at Google, insightfully points out, a creative’s job is to challenge norms and push boundaries. Because without discomfort, there's no growth. Exploring the edges reveals how far we can go — but as we push forward, we have to ask ourselves: Is this still true to our brand? Striking that balance allows us to evolve without losing our core identity. Only by stepping outside our collective comfort zones can we spark real growth. https://lnkd.in/gVzMGns6

How do you visualize sound in a way that’s both unique and premium? The reality is—the task of visualizing music and sound can often lead to generic movements. For Tidal’s Rising initiative, we needed to develop a motion identity that was both distinct and seamlessly integrated with Tidal’s core identity. To achieve this, experimentation was essential. Utilizing odd spacing and rhythmic reveals to create dynamic movements, we developed a motion identity system that brings music and sound to life through typography. Because it’s not just about visualizing music— It’s about understanding how sound and music make you feel, by connecting movement to emotion. https://lnkd.in/gyTduBWV

The first in our series of roundtable insights for the Next '24 conference. We take a deep dive with the Google Cloud in-house brand team on all things process & the last 3 years of partnership. 💜

Brands, like humans, evolve 🧬 We adapt to our environment, the people around us, and how we interact. And that’s the thing about motion identities — while core values are often consistent, they require iteration, allowing us to evolve with our audience. That’s why it’s not about a singular animation or nailing the “hero”. Because one singular element is not what creates the emotional imprint. It’s how these behaviors play into each other, connect, and relate — across a variety of moments, spaces, and emotions. It requires both identifying and, more importantly, understanding that journey and its evolution over time. And like humans, that’s the difference between a singular interaction and a long-term relationship. A huge thank you to our friends at Google Cloud for bringing this vision to life. Luis Iglesias, Denny Tran, David Colson, Erina Dempsey, Mollie Norin, Ben Meldrum, Jeff Curry, Celia Cañez, Celine Mazzoleni, and many more.

Google Cloud Next: Communicating The Ever-Changing Nature Of Tomorrow🔭 For the third year, we partnered with Google Cloud’s brand team to define a motion identity, system, and major touchpoints for the 2024 conference, including event screens, DOOH, and social media. Building on the themes and motion behaviors from Next '23—Sharp, Responsive, Adaptive, and Wabi-sabi—we expanded our system inspired by iterative design and work-in-progress concepts. These four behaviors, in one way or another, communicate change, and when combined, made the motion identity feel alive and constantly in flux. This year, Google’s brand team added new, future-forward design elements to create a richer world. Our strategy was to create a library of lockups with different, but related, motion treatments, each communicating “change” in a unique way, allowing endless combinations for various applications. We focused on making these new elements (gradient, extended color palette, fragmentation, organic forms) work seamlessly in motion while ensuring the identity remained user-friendly. At a time when AI's future is a hot topic, this year’s theme of iteration and “work in progress” highlighted how rapidly technology evolves and how nimble and (playful!) Google is in its approach. We embraced imperfection. Thank you to our friends at Google Luis Iglesias, Denny Tran, David Colson, Erina Dempsey, Mollie Norin, Ben Meldrum, Jeff Curry, Celia Cañez, Celine Mazzoleni, and more.💚

How do you inspire real-world action through motion? In this nationwide campaign for MTV, we harnessed the power of motion identity to drive one of the most important actions people can take: voting. Designed to motivate viewers and empower creative teams, the toolkit reinforces a consistent call to action this election season across a variety of touchpoints. The ultimate goal? Cut through the typical election noise to remind viewers of their voice, and the importance of using it. Because when every vote counts, every frame matters. Thank you to our friends Lance Rusoff, Tim Livezey, Pam Brill, Kelly McCrossin, Kira J. McGann, Buddy-Buddy and more! 💜

How does a brand extend into new territories without losing its core identity? While working on TIDAL’s evergreen motion identity, they launched Rising—a platform designed to promote indie artists by providing them with a unique space to showcase their work—and asked us to help bring it to life. Collaborating alongside INDUSTRY’s fresh visual language with our friends at Hornet, we leaned into the offbeat spacing of typography and rhythmic reveals. Visualizing sound in unexpected ways allowed us to honor TIDAL’s core identity, while giving Rising a distinctive motion identity. An alignment that allows for differentiation. Because standing out also means staying true to who you are.

Differentiation. Distinction. Every move tells a story that goes beyond the static.