A great brand is all about trust. The relationship between company and consumer is a valuable asset. While great content has value, allowing a company to flesh out their philosophy through thought-leadership or technical explication, visual design is the key shortcut to establishing the tone of a company. And nowhere is this more true than animation.

Animation can build a trusting relationship in a way that is much harder to accomplish with text alone, or even static imagery. It engages with the consumer, drawing them into a 2-way communication that forms an emotional bond and response. The interactive element of animation generates user engagement and enhances their experience.

Great brands tell an authentic, unique story

Discovering your brand story lets you stand out in a crowded marketplace, differentiating your product or service from the rest of the field. Animation takes this one step further, distilling your brand story down to its essence, evoking real emotion to form deeper relationships.

Motion design is the perfect expression of this, leveraging animation and movement to tell a story in a compelling and involving way.

The bottom line

What is ‘good design’? We know it when we see it, but how do we define it more objectively?

Good design = trust + storytelling + good UI and UX

Good design is more than just a pretty aesthetic – it has a tangible impact on brand recognition, which in turn has real-world financial implications. Increase website conversion, better onboarding experiences, decreased bounce rate – all of these can make the ROI of what might initially seem expensive seem very attractive.

The Design Maturity Report 2018 by McKinsey

McKinsey defined a quantitative way to measure design. And according to their study, good design pays off – higher revenue growth, higher return for stakeholders.

Making the technical more human

Animation builds confidence and trust, encouraging us to discover more, to dig deeper. A customer journey that might be complex (or lengthy) to describe in words can often be attractively (and intuitively) conveyed with a universally appealing animation. There’s also the question of language – animation – as with all visual design – is not nearly as regionally specific, letting you reach a much broader language base in our increasingly globalized business world.

With so many companies competing for a consumer’s attention (and an ever-dwindling attention span or patience), good animation can set you apart, giving you that vital competitive edge. Our decision-making process, even in the (allegedly) more objective world of B2B, is still predominantly emotional – if we get to a website and dislike our experience, we’re never going to convert to the next stage, no matter what the quality of the product or service.

Animation adds a level of humanity – making your products more relatable, helping us to understand and trust complex digital offerings, filling in the gap between cause and effect.