When IBM Design was formed, one of the most urgent needs were design guidelines for teams beginning to work on products. I was able to use my background in animation to contribute motion design concepts.

My Role: Concept Design lead

Animations produced by Idean

The Concept

IBM has been around for over a hundred years, which creates a rich history to draw from. At the time these guidelines were being written, IBM was going through a transition. They had mostly stopped creating hardware for business users and adjusted to focus on software as their primary business.

Knowing this, it became even more important to help define what IBM’s products would move like. Motion contributes to the overall feeling a user gets when interacting with a software product, and we wanted IBM’s products to feel like a newer, better version of what they used to do with hardware.

Taking the idea that software was the new machine for IBM, we were able to pull examples of old machines throughout IBM’s history that helped us create unique animations.

Outcomes

The motion guidelines were very well received across teams and many of the pieces were adopted immediately for use in products. The guidelines were also mentioned in Val Head’s book "Design Interface Animation” as a good example of branded animation guidelines.