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Favourite Projects

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Mac Miller - Balloonerism

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This month saw a new release from the late legend, Mac Miller, Balloonerism. Originally written and produced between the two iconic albums, 2013’s Watching Movies with the Sound Off and 2014’s Faces, Balloonerism is his second posthumous album exploring life and death. 

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Tied to its release, the team at Hornet released a 24-minute psychedelic CGI film which is now airing on Prime Video. The film focuses on the themes of childhood and the difficulties and changes we experience when growing up.

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The visuals perfectly encapsulate the imagination we have as children, as the characters delve through different dreamlike worlds. As a highly influential artist who touched the lives of many, it’s great to see his legacy live on and to be gifted with new releases that honour his memory so well.

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Kimathi Flavien - Stack

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Vibrant, fun and very unique. We love this short mixed-motion piece by French-based designer Kimathi Flavien. Flavien describes the film as his representation of Graphic Design. To him, the craft manifests as a fascinating puzzle game for him to play with and solve.

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The short is playful and quirky and paired with the fantastic sound design by Pierre-Alain Lécroart. It’s an excellent example of how motion and sound can come together to create something that fixates the viewer.

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Brands in Motion Site Launch

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Independent motion design resource platform from Winston Duke & Jamie Quantrill, Brands in Motion, launched last week. It features the very best motion brand design from the industry and touts a fantastic freelancer/studio directory.

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The website also hosts a number of case studies from well-known agencies, as well as tips and tricks for designers and interviews with industry experts. With more creative resources and case studies to come, it’s worth adding this one to your bookmarks. 

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2025 Trends

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Motion Branding

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In the animation and branding world, designers know the importance of building motion foundations into the core of a brand’s identity. It seems that many businesses are realising its potential, and making it an essential part of their brand. 

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We’ve seen legacy brands such as Lloyds Bank embrace its power. With Wolff Olins, the bank revamped its identity and developed motion principles inspired by their iconic logo.

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Dropbox

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Last week, Dropbox released its new web-based brand guidelines. Such publications are increasingly common, especially amongst leading tech brands such as Klarna, which also has a dedicated motion section.  However, Dropbox pushed this even further with a beautifully sleek new interactive website, breaking the brand down into all its key elements. Rather than just dropping the brand guidelines PDF into a webpage, they’ve created a fluid interactive experience. 

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One thing they have nailed here is consistency. Brands need to be consistent in more ways than just their logo, colours and typeface; other crucial elements include tone of voice, images, icons, and motion. Together, these elements bring a sense of familiarity and - therefore - trust to a brand.

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Studio Updates

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For the team at OK Social, we’ve entered the New Year with a bang with lots of exciting projects to sink our teeth into. We’ve been working on some mixed media projects including some live film shooting and several graphics for events.  One of our projects which went live this week was our work for The Drum’s Predictions event at their lab in Shoreditch. We worked closely with their design team to help refine and elevate their promo and stage visuals for the event. 

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Predictions is a yearly event focused on looking into the future of design, with topics of conversation from industry leaders discussing what they think 2025 has in store. Working alongside The Drum’s team, we were tasked with creating the event graphics that would be displayed before and during the event.

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This acted as the event's branding and were used on screens, speaker cards, and on their website. Part of our brief was to encapsulate the feeling of looking into the future and giving a sense of magic. We took the idea of looking into a crystal ball and developed an identity that both represented the brand and the topic of the event.

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Our Head of Partnerships, Jimmy Gordon, was also featured in Creative Boom's article on what creative buzzwords the marketing industry needs to ditch in 2025. See what he and other creatives are saying here.

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We’re also currently on the hunt for a new shit hot full-time motion designer to join the team. If that sounds like you, or you know anyone, you can find more details on the role here.

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Jack & Jimmy will be hosting a workshop with Right Aligned Academy in March this year, discussing their experiences and journeys working within the creative industry. They'll be taking a slightly different approach and sharing some insights into the day-to-day studio life and some tips and advice for anyone looking to enter the industry or set up their own studio.

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Right Aligned Academy is a design resource platform offering insights from some of the world's top creatives. Their mission is to build a platform that bridges the gap by working in collaboration with best–in–class companies to power the needed change. They are focused on developing content that shares the processes used by freelancers, founders and teams. An excellent resource for budding creatives.

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We're really excited to be getting involved with the great work Chris and the team are doing.
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Thanks for reading this edition of Months in Motion, keep an eye on our socials for the next article at the end of February.