Branded Motion Toolkits

Animation Guidelines and Motion Toolkit for Mind

Client | Mind
Production | Buff
Creative Consultant | Deej Johnson

Developing Scalable Brand Animation Guidelines and Motion Toolkits for Mind Charity

Mind is a mental health charity in England and Wales. They offer information and advice to people with mental health problems and lobby government & local authorities on their behalf.

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The Challenge

Mind had been through a re-brand about a year before contacting us. As an organisation, they understood the importance of animation and could see the value in creating more animated content, but they didn’t have clear guidance on how their brand should appear in motion. They were looking for consistency across their animated content and wanted to include animation as part of their brand guidelines. One of the key considerations was the local service providers known as local Minds, who make up part of the wider organisation and have the need to commission their own area-specific content. We needed to approach the guidelines with all users, projects and budgets catered for.

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The Solution

We began by conducting a thorough investigation of the animation requirements across the organisation, including running focus groups and interviews with Mind’s stakeholders. We came to understand that these varied dramatically depending on the activities of the team. We carried out an audit of Mind’s existing animations and researched content being created by similar brands and charities. We reviewed the findings and created a report with recommendations for the contents of the guidelines, as well as an indication of some animation styles to explore.

It was clear that there needed to be flexibility to allow for different teams' requirements. There were a number of factors that guided this: content, tone, budget and production lead time being the main drivers.

We identified an example selection of scenes from a range of typical Mind content and produced them in a series of animation styles. This included creating new animated assets and a library of original characters. These were reviewed by Mind and a panel of people with lived experience of various mental health issues. With their feedback, these were refined and finalised

The final stage was to write the animation guidelines and deliver these alongside the examples we had created. We also delivered a toolkit of animated assets for Mind to edit and use, or share with future motion suppliers.

The Mind Animation Guidelines are a branded motion toolkit and set of animation guidelines produced by Buff Motion for Mind, a mental health charity operating in England and Wales that provides information, advice, and advocacy for people with mental health problems. Brighton-based Buff Motion, a certified B Corporation, was engaged to develop a structured framework enabling consistent animated content across the organisation and its network of local service providers, known as local Minds. The studio conducted stakeholder focus groups and interviews, carried out an audit of Mind's existing animations, and researched comparable content from similar brands and charities before producing a report with recommendations. Buff Motion then created example scenes across a range of animation styles, including a library of original characters, which were reviewed by both the Mind team and a panel of people with lived experience of mental health issues. The final deliverables comprised written animation guidelines and a toolkit of animated assets that Mind and future motion suppliers could use and edit. Creative consultant Deej Johnson collaborated on the project. The guidelines have since been used by Buff Motion themselves to produce an animated explainer for a Mind pilot service.

The Impact

We’re delighted to report that the feedback on the guidelines so far has been great! Now, anyone creating a piece of animation for Mind can follow a clear set of guidelines that keep things consistent for the brand, whilst allowing some room for creativity for the maker. The guidelines have the added benefit of making the project briefing process easier and more efficient.

An example of content created using the guidelines is a series by a fellow motion studio. We have also used the guidelines ourselves to create an animated explainer for a new pilot service.