Who this is for: Motion designers, content producers and creative reviewers.
What to prepare
- Approved logo file and permitted variants
- Brand owner's clear-space and minimum-size rules
- All neighboring animated elements
- Target compositions and background colors
Build the boundary from supplied rules
Use the brand’s own clear-space definition instead of inventing a universal margin. In an illustrative exercise, the supplied guideline defines padding as one symbol-width on every side. Draw that boundary around the approved logo and keep it on a separate review overlay.
If no rule is supplied, propose a conservative spacing study and ask the identity owner to approve it before treating it as policy. Record the source of the rule, the measurement unit and whether it applies to a symbol, wordmark or combined lockup. Do not assume those versions have identical boundaries.
Follow the logo through three states
At entrance, inspect whether the logo appears from a mask that temporarily slices recognizable letters or brings a neighboring shape inside its boundary. At hold, inspect text, decorative lines and partner marks. At exit, check whether a departing label crosses over the logo before the scene ends.
For an illustrative collision, an arc passes safely outside the final lockup but sweeps through the wordmark while the logo scales up. Correct it by shifting the arc’s path beyond the protected area or delaying the arc until the logo has left. Shrinking the logo to dodge the collision may create a separate minimum-size problem.
Protect geometry and ownership
Keep the final mark’s proportions, letter spacing and approved colors intact. If a reveal uses negative space or a mask, restore the exact supplied mark at rest and compare it with the source. A reveal should not redraw a distinctive letter or turn the symbol into an unapproved variant.
For co-brand scenes, create separate boundaries for each mark and establish the agreed relationship wording. Optical balance may require different displayed widths; identical pixel widths are not automatically equal visual presence. The brand owners should approve the lockup rather than leaving that relationship to animation timing alone.
Run the collision review
Inspect the first fully visible frame, every moment a neighbor passes closest, the final hold and the last visible frame. Also play the sequence in real time: a one-frame overlap may be hard to notice on a contact sheet yet obvious as a flicker. Keep the overlay in review outputs and remove it from the delivery file.
Record any exception with an exact frame or time and its approval. If a smaller aspect ratio compresses the composition, rebuild the surrounding layout while preserving the logo’s boundary. The acceptance condition is not “logo visible at the end”; it is recognizable identity with approved treatment throughout every intended visible state.
Review checklist
- Clear space comes from an approved rule.
- Neighbor paths remain outside the protected boundary.
- The final mark matches the supplied asset.
- Entrance and exit are checked as carefully as the hold.