Time Is the Material: From Motion Branding to Kinetic Identity

This long-form archival essay traces the lineage of kinetic identity from broadcast design to today’s motion-first frameworks.

PREFACE

Motion graphics and brand design have developed in parallel for decades, but they’re not converging naturally. They’re being forced together by infrastructure that assumes they already speak the same language. Clients commission brand and motion as sequential phases. The collaboration occurs project by project, rather than systematically.

What’s being called “motion branding” or “kinetic identity” isn’t a revolution. It’s broadcast design logic reappearing across digital platforms at a scale that makes the old divisions unsustainable. PBS formalized identity in motion in the 1970s. MTV proved it could be systematic and generative in the 1980s. Network branding industrialized these methods in the 2000s. Every brand now exists primarily on screens where static systems can’t function. The infrastructure needed to design identity through time, rather than add motion to identity afterward, has lagged decades behind the cultural shift.

Two industries evolved separately with incompatible methods. Brand agencies are organized around strategy, permanence, and control. Motion studios around production, narrative storytelling, and advertising cycles. Both now claim to do the other’s work, but the workflows remain fundamentally distinct. This isn’t about capability. Many studios have talented people in both areas. It’s structural. Projects are still commissioned the same way. Studios are still organized the same way.

This essay examines the history from the perspective of someone who spent twenty-five years simultaneously trying to build fluency in both languages. It traces the lineage that established these ideas in broadcast design, the practical challenge of merging workflows that still operate apart, the economic forces that keep them divided, and what it actually takes to design systems where time is the primary material rather than an applied effect.

FOUNDATIONS

Motion branding isn’t new. The logic was established decades ago in broadcast design. What distinguishes the current moment is not the framework but the scale, the proliferation of platforms, and the cultural context that surrounds it. Framing motion branding as something entirely new overlooks its history as a recontextualization of established practices rather than their reinvention.

In the 1960s and 1970s, PBS and other broadcasters formalized corporate identity in motion. Designers, including Herb Lubalin and Chermayeff & Geismar, worked in that orbit, translating print systems to television. Grids became sequences. Type gained rhythm. Pages turned into transitions. The principles of systematic design were adapted to accommodate time.

PBS – Logo & Animation (1970–1971)

The 1980s brought a different energy. MTV turned unpredictability into identity. Their logo morphed constantly as designers contributed variations. The work raised questions about whether identity was fundamentally about control or about freedom. The appeal was its modularity. A fixed logo transformed endlessly while remaining recognizable. This occurred decades before terms like “flexible branding” or “modular identity systems” were known terms.

MTV – Ident Archive (from 1981 to 1989)

Meanwhile in the UK, studios including The Designers Republic, 8vo, and Tomato were reimagining identity as dynamic and performative. Their work for record labels, television, and cultural institutions fused typographic discipline with the velocity of contemporary music and media. 8vo’s founders, Simon Johnston, Hamish Muir, and Mark Holt, studied directly under Wolfgang Weingart at Basel School of Design in the early 1980s, bringing his experimental typographic methods into UK club culture and music design. Club culture and music videos in the 1990s developed into a distinct visual language. The restraint of 8vo and the energy of The Designers Republic both shaped how behavior could function within design systems. Michael C. Place, who came from The Designers Republic, continued this work through his studio Build, refining that energy into systems with typographic clarity. This body of work was deeply influential for me, particularly in its typographic logic, which I would later understand was itself rooted in the Swiss tradition.

8vo Octavo - Select projects (1980-90s)

TDR & Build - Select projects (1990s-early 2000s)

Tomato bridged the gap between motion and identity. Their work feels part Kyle Cooper, part Hans Rudolf Lutz, merging cinematic title sequence thinking with Swiss typographic structure. This fusion positioned motion not as decoration but as a structural principle within brand systems.

Tomato - Select projects (1990s)

In the early 2000s, I was studying design and jazz performance simultaneously. The connection between rhythm and tempo drew me toward time-based work in motion. Studios like Logan and MK12 were producing graphic work that felt compositional, rhythmic, and structured through time. The work had an experimental graphic edge that made the field compelling.

MK12 – Sweater Porn (2001)

By the mid-2000s, when I entered the field professionally, motion branding had already evolved over several decades. Yet, in the decade that followed, these disciplines would diverge onto increasingly separate trajectories, setting the stage for persistent industry divides.

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TWO SEPARATE WORLDS

While motion design evolved in broadcast, brand identity agencies like Wolff Olins, Pentagram, and 2x4 established institutional cultures centered on control and permanence. Static systems and manuals defined the work. Motion was ignored or treated as decorative. The output appeared on the page, disconnected from how brands were actually functioning in practice.

Pentagram – United Airlines (2004)

Meanwhile, motion graphics studios that had defined television’s design culture began shifting toward production. Budgets grew. Advertising became the dominant industry. Studios like Psyop, Buck, and The Mill transitioned from systematic design to narrative-driven production work. Designers became directors of live-action and VFX-heavy projects. The design logic that had been central to broadcast work was gradually replaced by cinematic language and storytelling frameworks driven by the needs of advertising.

Psyop & W+K – Coca-Cola “Happiness Factory” (2006)

By the mid-2000s, these industries operated in parallel with incompatible vocabularies. Brand agencies focused on strategy, permanence, and precision, prioritizing long-term identity clarity. In contrast, motion studios emphasized narrative, production, and rapidly evolving marketing cycles. As a result, collaboration was rare. The traditional design world viewed motion as separate, associating it with commercials and film titles rather than integrated brand identity systems. These divisions persist today, though they are slowly dissolving.

Network branding served as the main bridge between these economies. Studios like Loyalkaspar, Eyeball NYC, and Trollbäck developed systems of idents, lower thirds, transitions, and modular layouts that defined the visual grammar of entire networks. Yet even these studios were largely confined to the motion sphere and rarely included in broader conversations around brand identity. Their work was respected within broadcast design but remained peripheral to the strategic and typographic discourse of traditional branding. For a time Brand New School’s work for MTV and FUEL TV also fell into this lineage, creating motion-driven identity systems that expressed brand behavior through time and variation rather than static consistency.

Eyeball NYC – Country Music TV (2005)

Brand New School – Fuel (2003)

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LEARNING THE LANGUAGE

My formative training was at Logan, Prologue, and Motion Theory. These studios shaped my understanding of motion’s visual language. I later led projects at Eyeball, Shilo, and other studios in this sphere, but those early experiences provided the foundation.

Alexei Tylevich at Logan was the most significant influence on me. His approach was rigorous and graphic. I started at Logan directly out of school at 21, working under him and absorbing his process. Logan created Apple’s first iPod silhouette ads, work that redefined visual culture for nearly two decades. What made Alexei’s approach unique was the ability to operate across multiple registers. One Dot Zero was extremely artistic and experimental, a pure visual exploration that demonstrated his early work with generative and procedural techniques. Metal Gear Solid showcased a unique combination: rigorous typographic structure fused with experimental visual thinking. No one else in the field had that level of typographic fluency while maintaining the freedom to work both experimentally and procedurally. Alexei could do both and was exploring generative methods long before they became standard practice. The One Dot Zero and Metal Gear Solid projects remain as precise today as they were 20 years ago. One demonstrates procedural experimentation. The other demonstrates how typography and experimentation coexist without compromise. He continues producing conceptually sharp motion work from LA, though his influence through Logan deserves wider recognition.

Logan – One Dot Zero (2005)

Logan – Metal Gear Solid (2006–2007)

Those years changed my perspective fundamentally. As motion graphics gained popularity, designers became directors, and the work shifted toward abstraction and surrealism. Typographic rigor diminished. I wanted to restore some clarity, to balance freedom with structure.

That impulse led to the launch of DIA Studio with my partner, Meg Donohoe. The approach was straightforward: treat motion as a system rather than an effect. This became the foundation for how we thought about motion in brand work. (Some transitional DIA work below)

DIA Studio – Nissan “Journey to Zero” (2010)

DIA Studio – FX Network “The Bridge” (2013)

Getting there required unlearning the frameworks inherited from motion design. Layouts and brand systems were not built to live in motion. Cross-platform touchpoints did not exist within motion workflows. The work was linear and edit-based rather than systematic. We were still thinking in SD and HD, locked to single-frame formats, tied to timelines and delivery specs. None of that prepared us for designing an identity that needed to function across multiple surfaces and contexts simultaneously.

It forced complete recalibration. I returned to typography to understand the structures that hold visual systems together when everything becomes dynamic. I revisited the Swiss canon and its lineage: Müller-Brockmann, Karl Gerstner, Wolfgang Weingart, Peter von Arx, Hans Rudolf Lutz, April Greiman. This led to a deeper study of type design itself, which eventually evolved into MNKY Type. Type became the way to understand how motion and structure could coexist. The letterform is the smallest unit of a kinetic system, something that could expand, repeat, adapt, and behave. That study completely reshaped my understanding of design. Motion and type became inseparable. It became clear that this was the same foundation the UK designers had worked from years earlier. 8vo extends directly from Weingart but is repositioned into a UK cultural context.

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THE COLLISION

By the mid-2010s, communication had largely shifted to screens. Every identity functioned in motion across websites, apps, digital billboards, social media, and installations. Smartwatch interfaces are updated throughout the day. The airport displays guided passengers in real-time. Brands could no longer operate as static systems. The shift was complete.

Infrastructure lagged behind. Branding studios added motion as a final step. Motion studios borrowed branding frameworks without systematic integration. The fields appeared to merge, but they remained separate. Branding relied on guidelines. Motion focused on production. The methods stayed distinct. We were experimenting with ways to integrate these approaches, folding motion logic into brand structure through client work and studio research. The projects and experiments from this period mark early attempts to build a scalable commercial context where both disciplines could coexist. The formats extended beyond screens into immersive, AR, and VR environments. This thinking was visible in our first Instagram post in 2013.

DIA Studio – Projects & Format Experiments (2013-2018)

The conclusion was clear. Adding brand designers to motion studios or animators to branding firms does not work. Leadership requires fluency in both production and design. True integration demands a structure that unites motion and brand from inception, not through collaboration between departments.

Motion branding today is broadcast design logic reappearing under new conditions. The same mechanics of coherence now organize digital ecosystems. The industry became confused because one side built rigid brand systems while the other prioritized production and narrative storytelling driven by advertising. Both recognized that a gap existed between them, but they continued to operate separately.

Working in this landscape required fusing disciplines and experimenting across emerging media, from interactive environments to immersive and spatial design.

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THE BRIDGE

Between 2015 and 2018, we built the connection between design structure and motion behavior. Meg Donohoe shaped the studio’s strategic foundation, making the work viable at scale. Motion was not added at the end. It defined projects from the beginning. Collaborations with A-Trak, Nike, and Squarespace provided opportunities to test and refine the approach. We learned as much from our failures as from our successes. Projects like Primary explored generative systems within traditional branding contexts. The logos moved. The systems had procedural flexibility. Motion was not yet the core organizing principle. Those explorations clarified the distinction between adding motion to a system and building a system that begins with motion.

Moving Brands’ Swisscom rebrand from 2007 to 2008 was an earlier innovative project in this direction. The generative logic there functioned differently, serving more as graphic art direction than as the fundamental basis for motion. It emphasized textural and visual flexibility through the use of generative methods. It was a pivot in the same direction we had been pursuing for years.

Moving Brands – Swisscom (2008)

Through this work, we arrived at what we call Kinetic Identity as our framework for building identity through time. It became the foundation for understanding the relationship between design, behavior, and motion. A way of structuring systems in time.

DIA Studio – Primary (2015)

DIA Studio – A-Trak (2016-2017)

DIA Studio – Nike KD11 (2018)

The Squarespace rebrand represents our most comprehensive example even to this day. The identity was conceived collaboratively from the beginning, uniting motion, proportion, typography, and structure within a single integrated process. Working closely with François Rappo on the custom Clarkson typeface, we aimed for typographic clarity while adhering to motion principles that would govern the brand’s behavior across every touchpoint. Squarespace combined Swiss typographic rigor with a procedural motion-based system at its core. The Square and the Space use an isometric camera to build compositions, alongside the core motion toolkit assets seen in earlier network branding. The outcome was not simply guidelines but a living system with procedural logic, capable of generating variations and adapting as needs changed. This approach blurred the boundaries between brand and motion fundamentally, making behavior rather than appearance the foundation of identity.

Squarespace Rebrand – DIA Studio (2018-2019)

Squarespace Website – (2018)

The system launched in 2018 and has operated without a significant rebrand or overhaul for nearly eight years. This longevity is uncommon. Most brand systems from that period have been replaced or substantially revised. The durability likely stems from both the typographic rigor and the procedural logic. Typography provides structural stability, allowing motion to remain systematic rather than stylistic. The procedural foundation allows the brand to adapt and expand without requiring structural changes, which was the objective from the beginning.

Squarespace - Homepage (2025)

The framework merged the rigor of brand systems with the fluidity of motion. The designer’s role shifted from composing layouts to defining behaviors, designing how a system moves through time, how each medium captures a fragment of that motion, and how it adapts across every context.

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THE REINTRODUCTION

In 2019, Studio Dumbar/DEPT’s DEMO Festival became the largest public demonstration of motion’s role in design. It filled the screens of Amsterdam Central Station with hundreds of works from studios and designers worldwide. For many, it was the first time motion was presented as design itself rather than as craft, signaling its place in branding culture. The impact was particularly significant in Europe, where motion design had less prominence in visual culture than in the US. The conversation around Kinetic Identity, a term we coined at DIA to distinguish motion-first thinking from motion as an afterthought, had been building independently. DEMO amplified the broader shift to a global design audience.

DEMO Fest – Curated by Studio Dumbar/DEPT (2019)

DEMO was a cultural milestone because it brought motion to the center of design discourse, giving it visibility beyond production circles. For those who lived through the LA and New York motion scene in the late 1990s and early 2000s, it felt familiar. The non-linear compositions, modular repetition, and generative loops had been explored twenty years earlier, usually for element creation rather than holistic brand systems. Alexei Tylevich was exploring generative design at Logan as early as 2001, work visible in projects like One Dot Zero. Around the same time, artists like Josh Nimoy (RIP) were developing procedural tools and techniques. (Josh coincidentally developed the first DIA website.) This parallel evolution of motion designers, such as Alexei, who think procedurally, and artists like Josh, who build generative tools, represented an early cross-pollination between motion studios and code-based artists. What changed by 2019 was not just visibility but scale. The procedural techniques that had been in use in specialized studios for two decades became accessible to a broader range of designers. The context and intent behind these technologies shifted from experimental exploration to foundational methodology.

What DEMO did is help translate the mystique of motion design into the language of branding, making it accessible to designers who had never directly engaged with it. The move strategically repositioned Dumbar as a leader in the new wave of forward-thinking motion studios.

Since then, the exchange has continued. Studios like Gretel have moved from broadcast and motion into brand work, sometimes stepping away from motion entirely to explore physical identities for restaurants. Dumbar/DEPT has expanded in the opposite direction, moving into motion graphics and network branding with projects like Comedy Central, which sit far from their earlier Dutch modernist foundation. This demonstrates how the field keeps folding back on itself. These projects echo what motion studios established decades ago. Each side crosses into the other’s territory, searching for fluency that the other developed independently.

But now everyone is an everything company. It becomes increasingly unclear who the author is, especially in branding. This creates confusion for clients about who to engage with and when.

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THE RETROFIT PROBLEM

By the early 2020s, a retrofit motion branding economy had emerged. Most studios now claim expertise in both areas, though each approaches the work from distinct traditions. Branding firms such as Pentagram, 2x4, Collins, and Wolff Olins evolved from systems thinking, focusing on strategy, identity architecture, and long-term coherence. Motion studios such as Buck, Elastic, Hornet, The Mill and many others grew out of storytelling and advertising culture, where narrative and production craft define value. Both lineages continue to inform how motion and identity intersect, even as the methods and infrastructures behind them remain fundamentally different.

A new economy emerged in the middle ground. Studios like Vucko specialize in bringing static systems to life. They fill the gap between idea and production. Vucko exists to fill this void. For a period, we occupied this space by necessity.

We worked on several high-profile projects that had already been launched and celebrated, but were structurally incomplete. The systems lacked time-based behavior. Motion thinking was not part of their foundation. We were asked to add motion, but quickly realized the problem was foundational. The brands were not built to behave this way.

Mailchimp Refresh – DIA Studio (2021)

These projects revealed the challenges of treating motion as an afterthought and why adding it to systems designed for static use yields awkward results. The experience demonstrated that time-based behavior works best when embedded from the beginning.

After those experiences, we reconsidered our engagement model. We now focus on projects where we can be involved from the start, where strategy, design, motion, and tool building develop together as one process. The retrofit model persists across the industry. Studios like Vucko, whose site states, “We build motion systems that scale your identity,” continue to translate static brands into motion, as seen in projects like Back Market by Studio Herrström. Dumbar/DEPT has taken on similar work, adapting systems such as 2x4’s Instagram identity to operate in motion. These projects are often strong, but they expose a larger structural issue. Motion is still treated as a later addition rather than the foundation of brand development.

This is not about capability. Many studios have talented people in both areas. It is structural, an artifact of how projects are commissioned and sequenced. This fragmentation creates confusion for clients and stakeholders, who are often unsure which type of studio to collaborate with or when to bring them into the process. The authorship problem compounds this. When brand and motion are commissioned separately, credit becomes ambiguous. Case studies blur the lines between who designed the system and who animated it. Studios present retrofitted motion work as if it were foundational thinking. The industry performs integration in presentations while preserving separation in practice.

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TIME AS MATERIAL

For us, Kinetic Identity remains the framework that unites design, strategy, and behavior. It is procedural. A brand is defined by how it behaves, not just by how it looks. The designer’s job is to design that behavior, how a system generates, adapts, and performs over time.

This kind of authorship requires integration from the beginning. It cannot be added later. The work must be designed over time. Static artifacts are only evidence of the system’s performance.

Over time, we realized that this framework demanded a new kind of process. One that was systematic and procedural but agnostic to platform or tool. Whether we worked in Cinema 4D, After Effects, Three.js, Processing, or openFrameworks, the logic had to remain consistent. The idea came first. The software only translated it.

We also encountered a major barrier in the monolithic tools that dominate the design industry. Platforms like Figma and Adobe were never designed for procedural systems or thinking in terms of time. They reinforce static workflows and linear outputs. In the mid-2000s, generative art was not confined to galleries or installations. Artists like Josh Nimoy were collaborating directly with motion studios, producing code-based visuals for music videos, commercials, and branding. Processing, developed by Casey Reas and Ben Fry, became a staple in the toolkit of forward-thinking motion designers. Zach Lieberman’s openFrameworks provided another critical tool for real-time generative work. This cross-pollination seeded today’s generative branding workflows, well before the current wave of AI and automation. To evolve the work, we had to build our own pipelines outside the standard ecosystems. Alongside Processing, Three.js, and open-Frameworks, we generated parametric systems, treated Cinema 4D as a logic engine rather than just a renderer, and used After Effects as a compiler rather than a composition tool. The goal was to design the behavior, then let the software execute it. Today, generative design and AI-driven branding are gaining momentum, making these approaches more accessible to a wider range of studios, not just those with custom toolchains.

SPACE10 – DIA Studio (2020)

smlXL – DIA Studio (2022)

This became a critical part of our process. We believed that creativity should not be defined by the software it lives in. Just as musicians build studios filled with different instruments, hardware, and software synths to explore sound, we assembled our own creative setups to explore motion and behavior. The goal was the same: to access potential, not presets. This mindset became the core of the Kinetic Identity process.

This is the real distinction between motion branding and Kinetic Identity. One treats time as a new canvas for existing design thinking. The other treats time as the primary material of design itself. Practitioners have found this distinction useful for articulating the difference between retrofit approaches and systems where motion is foundational, evidence that the framework addresses a real gap in how the field discusses this work.

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WHERE WE ARE NOW

The motion branding economy continues expanding. Every studio lists motion as a core offering, and every brand wants to appear dynamic. Processes are changing, but not evenly. A gap persists between ambition and fluency, between what is claimed and what is built.

Advertising agencies have started building in-house brand design and motion departments. Everyone is expanding capabilities to appear end-to-end, from strategy to production. The entire industry positions itself as a full-stack service model. When every agency claims to do everything for everyone, it becomes increasingly difficult to discern where genuine differentiation lies. The boundaries that once defined disciplines are dissolving, and the question becomes not who can do the work, but who can do it with true fluency and authorship.

The lineage is clear: PBS, MTV, 90s studios, network branding, Kinetic Identity, DEMO. One continuous thread cycling through new tools and mediums.

Real coherence will only come from a new generation of designers who grow up fluent in both languages, designers who see design as something that performs as much as it composes. Established agencies are unlikely to adopt this model. Their hierarchies and production systems are too entrenched. The shift will come from new studios built around different assumptions. Teams that think in code, typography, and motion simultaneously.

Early signs are already visible. Graduates from ECAL, KABK, and ZHdK are starting studios with this thinking embedded from the start. Although it remains niche, its influence is beginning to take hold. Many of these schools have hosted our workshops and lectures over the years, allowing us to witness this shift firsthand. Until teaching time as a structural component becomes standard across design education, the industry will continue performing integration while reproducing the same silos.

ECAL MATD workshop “Future Specimens” – DIA Studio (2019)

The longer I work, the more I see time as the real author. We build systems, but time reveals what they can become. Kinetic Identity was never about a style. It was about giving design a way to think through time. It can adapt to any strategy, aesthetic, or medium because it is built on behavior rather than appearance. Everything else, including language, tools, and industry, will continue changing. The logic stays.

Time is one constant. ⏱️

-Mitch Paone

CONTEXTUAL THREADS

Historical Foundations

• Herb Lubalin — typographic systems, early broadcast identity influence

• Chermayeff & Geismar — corporate identity formalization in motion

• PBS Network Identity (1970–71) — early graphic design for television

Broadcast & Motion Design Lineage

• MTV Idents (1981–1989) — collection archives, network rebrand transitions

• Fuel, Logan, Brand New School, Psyop, Buck — 1990s–2000s motion design

Typographic and System Thinking

• Karl Gerstner – Designing Programmes

• Josef Müller-Brockmann – Grid Systems in Graphic Design

• Wolfgang Weingart – My Way to Typography

Motion & Systemic Thinking in Practice

• Moving Brands – Swisscom Rebrand (2007–08)

• Studio Dumbar/DEPT – DEMO Festival (2019)

• DIA Studio – Squarespace, Mailchimp, Pinterest, SPACE10

• Josh Nimoy, Zach Lieberman, Casey Reas, Ben Fry — generative logic and tool-building

Further Reading / Critical Context

• Guy Debord – The Society of the Spectacle

• Richard Sennett – The Craftsman

• Paul Virilio – The Aesthetics of Disappearance

• Hartmut Rosa – Social Acceleration

• Mark Fisher – Capitalist Realism

Further Inquiry

• On teaching time as material in design education

• The future of Kinetic Identity as a procedural discipline

• Integration models between design systems, code, and behavior

(Written by Mitch Paone. Editing assistance from Claude Sonnet 4.5 (Anthropic). All sources independently verified by the author.)