How to move audiences with moving pictures?

We can’t name a single brand that shouldn’t have a brand film. It’s a brilliant way to set the GPS on exactly who you are, what you’re about, and what the energy of your brand is. It’s often a great opportunity to humanise your brand, whilst making sure you’re telling a story.

The example here for Oxford North works particularly hard, expressing a place before it even existed yet. The magic of cinema allowed us to evoke, suggest and promise without feeling intangible.

When Warner Music repositioned a few years ago, they felt they’d finally articulated how they want to be understood — “Where originality finds the power to move the world?”. But they also knew that in order to really land, that idea had to translate into film.

We helped Warner Music create a scripted film tapestry flexing the iconic breadth of their artists. Maybe most importantly, we slimmed that line down into a statement: Original voices move the world.

We’re in a golden age of motion. Powerpointy animation is long dead, and now every brand needs to think about how it can wiggle and jiggle. This means logos, idents, even smoothly moving decks and slides.

When we helped Native Instruments launch their flagship subscription: 360, we needed to invent a motion identity for the brand. As you can see here, whirring, cyclical motifs helped us make musicians feel truly ‘surrounded’ by 360.

Proper animation is completely disarming when you experience it. The sheer craft it takes to put together a story that wasn’t filmed is a rare treat for viewers. We don’t really see brands using it enough.

The snippet shown here is from a cell animation we made for the NSPCC about childhood neglect. Every frame is lovingly painted by hand, and that crackling energy creates a tension the audience can absolutely feel burning through the screen.