Motion isn't the future of branding.

It's the present most brands are late to.

I remember the exact moment I understood what motion could do.

It was at college in Glasgow, working with Macromedia Director (ahem… he coughs up dust). Ancient by today's standards, but revolutionary in the 1990s, laying foundations for the interactive digital media industry. Until then, everything I'd learned about design was rooted in static thinking. Print, layouts, the fixed and the finished. Macromedia Director was something else entirely. Suddenly I could make things move. Add interaction. Add sound. I'd watch an idea reveal itself over time rather than all at once. Something clicked that I couldn't quite explain.

Around the same time, I saw a lecture by the legendary Kyle Cooper, co-founder of LA-based Imaginary Forces, and creator of the title sequence for Se7en. Watching him talk about how type, texture, sound and timing could create dread before a single scene had played was all it took. I just knew this was different. This was closer to what design was supposed to feel like. The dread was optional.

Looking back, I can see how that spark shaped everything that followed. I'd bend every brief and use any excuse to bring motion into a project. In the midst of the dot-com boom, surrounded by screen-based-everything, I assumed that interest meant I was destined for web design. A screen, certainly. Just not quite the right one for me.

It was only when I found myself at London agency, Lambie-Nairn that it properly made sense. Martin Lambie-Nairn effectively invented the discipline of broadcast identity. Channel 4, BBC One & Two, countless others. He transformed the way television brands presented themselves to the world and created an entire creative language in the process. Landing a role there was one of those rare moments you recognise, even while it's happening, as something you'll be grateful for, for the rest of your career. Brand brought to life through motion. Motion underpinned by the rigour of brand. I've been making that argument ever since.

The gap most brand identities don't know they have

Brand identity is about far more than aesthetics. But when it comes to how audiences experience a brand day to day, it's the visual language that does the heavy lifting. And in most cases, that visual language has been designed to sit still, leaving the most emotionally powerful dimension of the brand unexplored. Motion isn't an add-on. It's the missed opportunity hiding in plain sight.

A brand's visual identity doesn't disappear when it starts to move. The logo, the colour palette, the typography, the visual language: these are the foundations of motion design just as much as they are of print. They're the raw material. The question is whether they've ever been given the chance to move.

Most brand guidelines have almost nothing to say about that. They'll specify a typeface to the exact weight and tracking. They'll define a colour palette to the Pantone reference. But ask how the brand should behave in motion, how it moves, what feeling that movement creates, and the answer is usually 'good question' which, in meeting-speak, means nobody knows. Or a token motion example dropped into the guidelines without context, no rationale, no principles, no explanation of why it moves the way it does. Just a GIF sitting there, hoping nobody asks questions.

The result is a brand operating with an incomplete toolkit. One that stops at the edge of the page and hopes for the best beyond it.

Motion is where feeling lives

Static design can be extraordinarily powerful. A well-crafted identity, the right message, considered imagery and thoughtful placement can all create genuine emotional response. But motion is a multi-dimensional medium that opens up entirely new creative territory. Time and narrative, pace and rhythm, the emotional weight of a soundtrack: these are the tools that allow a brand to be felt as well as seen. It gives a brand personality and presence that even the strongest static identity can only hint at.

It communicates before the viewer has consciously decided to pay attention. Research consistently puts the mobile scroll decision at somewhere between one and three seconds. Not long enough to read a headline, barely long enough to register a logo. That distinction matters more than it ever has.

To give a sense of the range this thinking can reach, I'll draw on a few projects from my own practice. Different sectors, different scales, different briefs, but the same underlying question running through all of them: what does this brand need to communicate, and how can motion do that more powerfully?

UK Debt Expert needed to cut through one of the most saturated, least trusted categories in financial services. Every competitor was leading with the same message: the percentage of debt they could write-off. Functionally identical. Emotionally inert. The insight that shifted everything was simpler and more human than any percentage: ‘You are not alone’. The logo itself is two people, constructed from the same geometric shapes that form the wider mosaic system, a visual expression of partnership from the very first mark. That mosaic could be reassembled in an infinite number of configurations, representing the breadth of people affected by debt and the tailored solution available to each one of them. Every element shared the same DNA, and all of it was designed to move. Shapes assembling into characters, processes, maps, illustrations, the mosaic came to life through motion in the explainer video, the website reveals, the logo animation on the TV commercial. None of it felt added on, because it wasn't. Motion was implicit in the design logic from the moment the visual language was conceived. The shapes moved because that was what they were for.

For Euronews, motion wasn't part of the identity. It was the identity. A broadcast channel built on the idea of multiple perspectives: a radial visual concept that held together channel idents, title sequences, programme packaging and everything in between. The core idea manifested differently in every execution, but the motion language was consistent throughout. You always knew where you were.

And then Isle of Harris Distillery: a duty-free sampling bar at an international airport, with screens wrapping around three sides of a vertical column and curving across the bar front. No audio. An audience in transit with no reason to stop. Every frame had to carry the atmosphere of the island entirely on its own, and the animation had to flow seamlessly across surfaces existing in different planes of three-dimensional space. A completely different brief from either of the above. The same discipline underneath.

Three briefs. Three entirely different contexts. One consistent truth: motion, when it grows from the same thinking as the identity itself, gives a brand the power to move people. In every sense.

Reframing motion as brand evolution

Many established brands are showing up on social channels with only static content and working increasingly hard for diminishing returns. The platforms they're publishing on were built to favour motion. Instagram's algorithm puts Reels above everything else in the feed. LinkedIn video generates around five times the engagement of a text post, according to LinkedIn's own marketing data. A brand posting static images into that environment isn't being consistent, it's being outpaced, quietly and continuously, by brands that understood what the channel was asking for.

Building motion in from the start will always be the stronger position. But it's far from the only one. A brand with a strong visual identity already has everything it needs to develop a motion language, and doing so is less a reinvention than a natural next step in the brand's evolution. The shapes, the colours, the visual logic, the personality, all of it translates directly into how a brand can move. Developing a motion language from that foundation tends to reveal just how much the existing identity had to say all along. Motion isn't something a brand either has or doesn't have. It's a dimension that can be introduced, developed and deepened over time, at any stage of a brand's life.

What AI has changed about motion, and what it hasn't

For a long time, "we should think about motion" was met with "that depends on your budget." Specialist skills, dedicated software, significant production time: for brands without broadcast resources, it was a reasonable thing to deprioritise.

AI has changed that calculation, to a point. It has put some form of motion capability within almost anyone's reach, removing barriers that previously kept it off the table for smaller brands entirely. For professionals, it can accelerate production processes, reduce costs and open-up techniques that were previously unattainable. That's a genuine shift and worth acknowledging.

That said… a reality check. The outputs range from genuinely impressive to complete fever dream. It can also behave like a fruit machine. You pull the lever, the reels spin, and somewhere between the fifth attempt and the tenth you realise you've lost both your credits and your sanity. As my dad would say: “You gets what you pays for.”

The wider point is that accessible tools don't automatically produce considered work. Motion that exists and motion that communicates are two very different things, and the gap between them is creative judgement. That's what determines whether a motion piece strengthens a brand or simply adds noise to an already crowded environment. AI hasn't changed that. If anything, it's made it more important.

The brands that will succeed are already moving

According to Wyzowl's State of Video Marketing report, 92% of marketers plan to maintain or increase their video marketing spend in 2026; the highest figure since they began tracking it. The global market for AI-driven animation was valued at $2.1 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $15.9 billion by 2030, according to ResearchAndMarkets.com. Video content is shared at dramatically higher rates than text and images across every major platform, and the gap continues to widen. These aren't trends. They're signals about how communication is shifting, and they're pointing in one direction.

The brands investing in motion now are building recognition, emotional connection and algorithmic advantage at the same time. The ones that aren't are working harder for less return, in channels increasingly designed to favour content that moves.

The brands that will succeed aren't just the ones with the strongest visual identities. They're the ones equipped to communicate through motion, on every screen, in every context, with the same intention they bring to everything else. That capability is available to more brands than ever before. The gap between the ones building it and the ones still deciding whether to is quietly, steadily widening.

That moment I described at the start…

Watching an idea reveal itself over time rather than all at once, the feeling that this was closer to what design was supposed to feel like. I don't think that's unique to me. I think most people, when they encounter a brand that genuinely moves them, are having a version of the same experience. They just don't always know that motion is what's responsible.

The brands that understand that are pulling ahead. The ones that don't are leaving their most powerful means of communication untouched. And perhaps that's the most surprising thing about all of this. The tools are more accessible than they've ever been. The evidence for motion's impact has never been stronger. The only thing most brands are waiting for is the decision to begin.

Whether you're building a brand from scratch, looking to bring an existing identity to life through motion, or simply want stronger content for social, I'd be glad to talk it through. Get in touch.