How do you balance simplicity and creativity when designing animated icons and buttons?

Focus on clarity first: Ensure the icons and buttons are instantly recognizable and their purpose is clear. Animate with intention: Use animation to enhance usability (e.g., highlighting interaction) or add subtle personality to the design. Keep it light: Animations should be smooth, efficient, and not distract from the overall user experience.

?? When approaching motion design, the first and most crucial step is to understand the purpose behind your animation. Consider what message or action you want to convey through the movement of your icon or button. How does this animation integrate with the overall context and flow of your interface? Additionally, ensure that it aligns with your brand identity and tone. Answering these questions will guide you in defining the scope and style of your animation, ensuring that it enhances the user experience and communicates effectively.

Understanding the purpose of the animation is essential for the video's success. Knowing your audience helps define the tone and message you want to convey. It's crucial to assess the level of detail and elements you can incorporate, ensuring that the communication is as clear and effective as possible. By aligning the animation with the needs and expectations of the audience, you maximize relevance and impact, creating an experience that truly resonates with viewers.

Get good at LottieFiles - the vector-based animation file format that is taking over the use of GIFs for web and mobile applications. Their file size is smaller while staying vector (can be infinitely scaled) and some properties can be changed after the export, like colors and looping speed. There are some limitations when preparing them for export from After Effects so it will take some troubleshooting usually. But they are very powerful.

Look into Rive. Rive is an animation application like After Effects, but allows you to export your animated content directly to a code based expert for use at runtime. Developers will need a plug-in on their end, but this process takes the headache away from developers and gives the designer the creative freedom back.

If you're creating branded little "stickers" for Instagram Stories, I recommend using something like Giphy.com — once you've uploaded an animated GIF to your account library, you can easily copy and paste it into your IG Story.

?? After defining the purpose of your animation, the next step is to choose the right format. Your choice will depend on the platform and target device, as different formats offer varying options and limitations regarding file size, resolution, and compatibility. For example, web animations might use SVG, GIF, or Lottie files, while mobile apps might require native formats like Core Animation for iOS or Android's Animated Vector Drawables. Select a format that best supports the quality and performance of your animation, ensuring it runs smoothly across all intended platforms.

Animated GIFs have a limited color palette. You can have anywhere from 2 to 258 colors, but the more colors you have (also the more frames you have in the animation), the bigger the file will be and the longer it will take to load if used on a web page. Simplifying the design and animation helps to keep the file size small.

The third step in motion design is to simplify the design of your icon or button. Simplicity is key, as it involves using minimal shapes, colors, and details that effectively convey your message or desired action. Avoid unnecessary elements like text, gradients, shadows, or borders that could distract or confuse users. By focusing on a clean, straightforward design, you'll find the animation process easier, from creation to editing and scaling. A simplified design ensures your animation remains clear, impactful, and adaptable across various platforms and devices.

In the design of animated icons and buttons, the principle of "less is more" is essential. Prioritizing critical information helps create clear and effective communication. By simplifying the design, we eliminate distractions and focus on the main message, allowing users to quickly understand the element's function. A minimalist approach not only makes the interface cleaner but also enhances creativity, as every detail gains importance. This way, we can make an impactful statement with efficiency and elegance.

The fourth step in motion design is to animate your icon or button with intention. This involves applying key animation principles—like timing, easing, spacing, and anticipation—to create smooth and natural transitions between states. Additionally, use animation techniques such as looping, morphing, scaling, or rotating to add visual interest and provide feedback to users. Animating with intention means every movement should enhance the functionality and personality of your icon or button, ensuring it serves a clear purpose and aligns with the overall user experience.

The fifth step in motion design is to test and refine your animation. Start by checking for errors, glitches, or inconsistencies across various devices and browsers to ensure smooth performance. Gather feedback from users, clients, or peers to evaluate the usability, clarity, and appeal of your animation. This iterative process is crucial for making adjustments and improvements. By thoroughly testing and refining, you can ensure that your animation meets your goals, aligns with expectations, and delivers an engaging user experience.

It's important to experiment with personal projects to take the learnings from these back to client projects. This way you know the limitations of each file format.

?? The final step in motion design is to experiment and have fun with your animation. This involves exploring various ideas, styles, and effects that can add unique value or an element of surprise to your icon or button. Don’t hesitate to draw inspiration from other examples, trends, and innovations in the motion design field. By experimenting and enjoying the process, you can express your creativity, push the boundaries of your skills, and ultimately create animations that stand out and captivate your audience.

You need to think seriously about accessibility when deciding if you should use animated icons on your website. Best practice is they should be off by default and take a click/press to start the animation. Unnecessary animations should be avoided altogether. I designed some for my website (I'm a motion graphics designer) but I'm considering removing them since learning more about accessibility.