Pretty Paper Studio is a lettering and calligraphy business based in Dubai. The business was founded in 2012, and has recently shifted in 2019 from selling art/craft supplies towards hand lettering and calligraphy services. The project was to create an animation of their existing logo suitable for use on their YouTube channel, which offers many tutorials covering the topics of hand lettering, calligraphy and crafts, as well as productivity tips.

Create a short, but engaging animation of the client's existing logo.

In order to capture the calligraphy element, I animated the logo as though it was being written out. The animation has been used on the Pretty Paper Studio's social media accounts and has received great feedback from their followers.

Dubai based Pretty Paper Studio was formed in 2012 by Nielouphar ('Neelu') Abdurahiman. Originally selling art supplies, the business has pivoted in the past few years to provide hand lettering and calligraphy workshops. To increase her online presence, Neelu runs a successful YouTube channel with over 4600 subscribers. Through her channel, she provides tutorials on hand lettering, calligraphy and crafts, as well as small business advice and productivity tips.

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Neelu and I had previously connected through Instagram and online business groups. She had wanted to get her existing logo animated for some time, so when I announced I would be offering logo animation and motion graphics as a service, she jumped at the chance to work with someone she trusted.

With the majority of Neelu's videos and business focused on calligraphy, I wanted to bring elements of this to the animation. I discussed this with Neelu and she loved the idea. The goal was to create a 'write-on' effect, so as the animation plays, it is as though the letters of the company name are being written out with a calligraphy brush pen.

With the concept agreed, I set to work on creating the animation. The initially involved the time-consuming task of creating and slicing up the shapes of the letters into the individual strokes of the pen if they were being written by hand. These shapes were then brought into Adobe After Effects for animation.

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After I animated the first few letters, I checked in with Neelu and gave her a preview of the progress and how the concept looked in motion. She loved what I had produced and was was excited to see how it would look in the end. We agreed that the concept worked well and I would continue on to completion.

Neelu was thrilled with the final animation. As agreed, I delivered a 16:9 version, at resolutions of 1080p and 4K (for future use), as well as a square version for Instagram.

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Neelu shared the finished animation on her social media channels, and it was met with many very positive comments from her followers, as well as the original designer of her logo.