UXMA needed a bespoke animated icon set to be used across their website, social media and presentation templates. The icons are deployed as Lottie files wherever technical integration is possible, making them lightweight and scalable across digital platforms. My role was to design and animate the decorative kinetic iconography, a distinct scope from the functional UX motion design handled by another part of the team.

The starting point was an analysis of UXMA’s brand identity, which informed the animation style throughout. To make that analysis actionable, we created an infographic documenting the key parameters.

Over 40 icons were animated in total. The source vectors already existed, but each one had to be prepared individually in Illustrator before import into After Effects, which meant thinking through the animation concept for every icon before touching the file. Without that upfront clarity, the preparation work would have had to be redone.

To ensure consistency across the full set, we defined a primary animation curve and a reversed version for easing. The motion starts fast and gradually slows down, creating a relaxed, natural feel rather than something mechanical.

Exporting the finals as Lottie files was a new part of the workflow and came with a steep learning curve. The format has strict requirements, and small inconsistencies in the After Effects setup that would be invisible in a regular video export become bugs in a Lottie. Getting the output clean and reliable across all 40 icons meant understanding not just the animation tool, but the technical constraints of the delivery format.