Marketing Promos

Animated Idents for IMEX’s 2023 Rebrand

Client | IMEX
Production | Buff
Sound Design | James Locke-Hart

Creating Core Pillar Brand Videos and Event Motion Design for IMEX Group.

The IMEX Group organises the leading international trade shows for global meetings industry.

The Challenge

During their 2023 rebrand, the marketing team at IMEX approached us to create some engaging animations to help showcase the new branding. The assets were to be used on socials as well as on large-scale screens at their global events.

The IMEX team wanted the visuals to be abstract, whilst taking inspiration from the company's four pillars: innovation, sustainability, people and experience. Another key outcome of the project was to ensure these idents created an expressive narrative by making use of the brand geometry. As there would be no voiceover, we had to figure out a way of making the pieces emotive through the use of design, motion and audio. One of our most fun challenges - telling stories with simple shapes

The Solution

We produced three extended logo animation idents: collaboration (hero), innovation and sustainability. For the hero ident, we chose to focus the narrative on the company ethos: ‘We are all connected”. We created a playful take on ‘herd instinct’, as IMEX’s story is really about the importance of human connection and experiencing things together. The dots are representative of people and we follow them through their collective journey in a vibrant geometric environment.

For the innovation and sustainability idents, we created videos using a similar concept, but focused on adapting the colour palettes, shape and movement to suit each theme. We really loved working with the 2D brand, but we wanted to achieve moments of surprise by shifting into 3D elements. This had the added benefit of giving the animations further depth and interest.

The final stage was to design selection of sound effects and lay these down. We also created a unique audio sting so the animated logo was branded both visually and audibly. The final deliverables were 1x animated sonic logo and 3x animated logo idents.

The IMEX Animated Idents are a series of brand animations produced by Buff Motion for IMEX Group, organiser of the leading international trade shows for the global meetings industry, created to showcase their 2023 rebrand across social channels and large-scale event screens. Brighton-based Buff Motion, a certified B Corporation, handled all production in-house with sound design by James Locke-Hart. The brief required abstract visuals inspired by the company's four pillars: innovation, sustainability, people and experience, with the added challenge of creating an expressive narrative using only brand geometry and no voiceover. Buff Motion delivered three extended logo animation idents focusing on collaboration, innovation, and sustainability themes, plus an animated sonic logo. The studio expanded the IMEX design universe through style frame exploration, shifting between 2D and 3D elements to create moments of surprise while maintaining brand consistency. The final deliverables were one animated sonic logo and three animated logo idents for use on social channels and large-scale event screens.

The Impact

The finalised suite of animated idents provided the IMEX Group with high-impact, versatile motion assets to anchor their global live events and digital marketing channels. By translating their key corporate pillars - Collaboration, Innovation, and Sustainability—into distinct, captivating visual stories, the motion graphics successfully humanised the refreshed brand identity. Ultimately, the project gave the internal marketing teams a powerful event toolkit to boost audience engagement, ensuring a cohesive and memorable brand launch that successfully resonated with the global B2B meetings industry.

"The kind of agency you dream of finding. Modern, fun, original and considerate. Terrific results. We are all delighted!"
IMEX
Design Manager
IMEX Group

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