Animate Your Cartoon Logos with Our AI Logo Maker — It’s Fast & Free!

Do you have a cartoon logo that you’re planning to use as a brand mascot? Talk about nailing it one shot!

Brands mascots are a popular branding feature that humanizes a brand and facilitates the process of people developing emotional attachments with them. Since most brand mascots appear as cartoon characters, they are easy to fall in love with and associate human qualities with.

Image Source: mms.com

The brand mascots of M&M candies — known as ‘Spokescandies’ — are such cultural phenomena that when the brand tweaked their appearances a couple of years ago, the world seemingly went into a meltdown. Memes were generated, the brand was derided for trying too hard to be ‘woke’, and even the Washington Post did a piece to say its two cents.

While the dust has settled since then, it has affirmed what many of us in branding and marketing have always known: brand mascots are powerful and carry the bulk of the brand’s emotional equity.

But what happens when you combine the power of mascots with animation?

Animation makes even the simplest of logos more interesting and engaging. With mascots, animation can help you take your brand messaging to the next level. You can animate your cartoon logos to heighten their humanistic appeal and thus get more people to develop positive feelings toward your brand. Animation can also help your cartoon mascot be more open and expressive and be more effective at conveying your brand message.

This post explores the relationship between cartoon mascots and brand endurance. We also cover animation briefly and touch upon its two distinct forms: Basic and Advanced. Plus, share a 4-step guide to help you craft animated cartoon logos for businesses and beyond.

The Cognition Behind Cartoon Mascots

Why do brands use cartoons as their mascots? From car insurance companies to cleaning product brands, cartoon mascots are everywhere.

Below are a few reasons why they may be so popular.

• Most cartoon mascots are anthropomorphic animals, which means, animals that have humanistic qualities. They can walk, talk, wear clothes, and display emotions. That’s why it becomes so easy for us to connect with and trust them.

• Cartoon mascots are immensely expressive. With huge eyes and wide smiles, they feel instantly likable.

• They have personality quirks and unique identifying qualities just like we do. The Energizer Bunny, for example, with his pink fluff and dark sunglasses looks distinct and stylish.

• Cartoon mascots are more flexible and dependable than celebrity ambassadors. They’ll always be there, ready to adapt to the changes in the brand messaging, and have the potential to transcend language, cultural, and geographical boundaries.

• They make products and services appear user-friendly enabling us to understand how to use them better and more effectively.

The Two Ways to Animate

On most logo-maker programs, you will find two ways to animate your cartoon logo design for business: Basic Animation and Advanced Animation.

• Basic Animation

Basic animation can also be referred to as motion graphics. When you animate your cartoon logo with the most basic type of animation, it will have short or brief movements on a loop. There won’t be any storytelling or elaborate expressions.

Basic animation is best for business logos catering to traditional audiences who can appreciate a cartoon mascot that winks or smiles but will be put off by anything overtly expressive.

• Advanced Animation

With advanced animation, the changes in logo design movements can be more detailed and rapid. Advanced animation gives you room to tell a bit of your brand story and show off your brand’s character and wit too.

If you are making a cartoon logo design for a child-centered business like a daycare or a toy store, consider advanced animation for more fun and livelier mascots. Businesses in entertainment, food and beverage, and real estate can also benefit from story-telling cartoon mascots.

4 Steps to Animating Cartoon Logos For Businesses

What are the practical steps to animating a business logo or its cartoon mascot?

1. Add your logo

If you have made your logo design with our AI logo maker, you’ll already have your cartoon logo on the list. If you have more than one design there, click on the one you want to animate and proceed further.

Remember that you have the opportunity to animate your complete logo, the wordmark in the logo, plus the symbol. It’s up to you and your business goals to decide if you want to animate just parts of the logo or the entire thing.

Do what works for your brand.

A word to the wise: Too much animation may lead to confusion or visual fatigue for consumers. Don’t put them off.

2. Select animation effects

With basic animation effects, you’re going to get simpler movements and limited mobility. You can make your cartoon logo design zoom in, zoom out, spin, move from bottom up or top down, and just play around a little.

With advanced animation effects, things get interesting. Not only do you have a lot of options to experiment with, but also have different options for different elements. For example, with the logomark, you have everything from Drawing (the animation draws the symbol in real-time) to Velocity (the symbol travels across the screen and comes to sit atop the brand name).

But when you’re animating the logo wordmark, the options change to offer incredible fluidity that looks natural and custom to typography. So you have things like Wave In (letters appear in waves), Reveal (each letter in the text appears after the other), and Gravity (letters fall from the sky) — all popular typography animation choices.

Choose the animation style that speaks the most closely to you.

3. Select animation duration

Animation has been a trendsetter for branding for a long time now but too much of anything can often be bad. It’s true for animation that runs longer past its bedtime.

When you decide to animate your cartoon logo, time it perfectly. A few seconds (2-3) are more than enough for a simple motion graphic to play out and deliver its message.

For more complicated and advanced animation, the movements run for longer, though they should ideally be capped at 6-7 seconds. If you have animated both parts of your logo design, the combined time can make it feel like the animation is dragging. So tweak it till you achieve a balance where the animation is still delightful and not a burden to the senses.

4. Download the animated logo

The last thing remaining is to download the logo after you make all the final adjustments. The animated cartoon logo for your business will be delivered in a GIF file.

Please note that we allow our customers to make changes to their logos even after the download. Just log back in, find your file, and restart where you had left off.

Conclusion

Animation turns simple graphics into a thing of wonder and amusement. So when you’re animating your cartoon logo for the business, you’re already in the winning lane.

Use our guide to learn how to benefit from animation the best. Check our animation studio to get a hands-on experience and see for yourself how animation can be the answer to many branding woes.