Brands don’t sit still anymore

A logo used to live on a letterhead. Now it lives on a phone screen, an LED wall and a podcast thumbnail, often in the same week. Everywhere it shows up, the brand is either moving or being scrolled past.

So motion can’t be the last job on the list. At Square in the Air our animation team works alongside design, so how a brand moves is decided at the same table as how it looks.

Motion earns the first second

The eye notices movement first. On a busy feed or a crowded show floor, a well timed reveal is the difference between a pause and a scroll.

But attention is the entry fee, not the job. Motion that says nothing is just noise. The craft is making the first second carry the message.

Put simply, static design asks people to stop. Good motion gives them a reason to.

Motion is part of the identity, not a layer on top

The strongest brand ideas have a verb hidden inside them. Motion is how you find it.

When we built DeGaming: Truth Beats Trust, the idea was a contrast: the industry’s Black Box against DeGaming’s Glass Box, where every mechanic is visible. That is an idea about revealing. It wants to move.

So animation sat in the identity system from day one, alongside the symbol, wordmark, colour and pattern library. The result was a hero brand film on loop at SBC Summit Lisbon 2026, and a brand that behaves the same way across social.

If everything moves the same way, the brand feels like one thing wherever it appears.

Design for where it plays

Every screen asks something different, so we design motion around the moment someone actually sees it.

On the show floor: every frame has to land

Nobody watches a stand screen from the start. For OMEGA Systems at SBC Summit Lisbon, we built a 120 second loop, running 30 times an hour, with one line in every frame: Take Control. Kinetic typography walks through the product ecosystem so a time poor C-suite audience gets the message wherever they catch it.

In the feed: built for the thumb

Social is vertical, short and often silent. For The Pools Party, our World Cup street activation, we cut six films designed for the feed first, with one reaching 139,000 views on its own.

Across a series: recognisable in a single frame

When content runs for weeks, motion ties it together. For Star Sports Bet’s The Inside Channel, we produced 20 World Cup podcast episodes with a nuclear green identity that stayed unmistakable across five platforms, delivering 1.8 million social views.

What good motion does

• It starts with the idea, not the software. If you can’t say what the movement means, it shouldn’t be there.
• It works on mute. Most people meet a brand with the sound off. Type and image have to carry the story alone.
• It reads from any frame. Loops, scrolls and glances mean there is no guaranteed start point.
• It has rules. Easing, timing and how type enters the frame belong in the guidelines next to colour and typography.
• It fits the canvas. Vertical, square, widescreen or a wall of LEDs, each one is designed for, not resized into.

See it moving

Easier to show than tell. Our new showreel brings together brand films, social content, podcast production and stand animation from across sport, betting and gaming.

Want the full story behind any of it? Explore our work.

Static is a choice now

If your brand guidelines stop at colour and type, there is a chapter missing. The brands that stand out in sport, betting and gaming are the ones that know exactly how they move.

From brand films to stand animation, our animation team builds on the same identity thinking as everything else we design. If your brand needs to start moving, get in touch.