During their 2023 rebrand, the marketing team at IMEX approached us to help them create some eye-catching animations to help showcase the new branding. The assets were to be used across their socials and 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 craft a way of making the pieces emotive through the use of design, motion and audio. One of our favourite challenges - telling stories with simple shapes!
“Buff is the kind of agency you dream of finding. Modern, fun, original and considerate.
Terrific results. We are all delighted!”
Anna Gyseman, Design Manager at IMEX
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 used 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 revealing 3D elements. This had the added benefit of giving the animations further depth and interest.
Here's a selection of early designs, some of which never made it into the final series of videos.
