Brand Animation
Monogram

Role
Logotype selection, character concept, and animation, done entirely solo in After Effects, for my personal brand, smrfe.

The concept
While designing a logo for my own brand, smrfe, I noticed the lowercase "e" in the typeface I'd chosen already looked like a face. Rather than treat that as a coincidence, I built a short character animation around it, using a personal brand project as an opportunity to practice motion graphics principles for a class assignment, rather than working from an assigned brief.

Process
The animation applies several core principles of animation directly to the logotype. The "e" rolls in from the left and pauses, smiling at the audience, a beat of anticipation before it winds up and jumps onto the "m," squashing and recoloring it on landing. It bounces off, spinning through an arc off-screen, then rolls back in from the right to bump into the "f," carrying the color change through the rest of the word. It closes on the "e" alone, with a wink and a tilt, a small beat of appeal and exaggeration to close the sequence with personality rather than just stopping.

What I learned
This was my first real practice with After Effects, and a chance to put the principles of animation into practice on something I'd designed myself rather than a stock exercise, seeing squash and stretch, anticipation, and follow-through actually applied to type I'd built, not just studied in theory.