Animated favicons in personal brand strategy
Favicons, the minilogos used by companies, governments and personal brands are starting to move. Futurist Erwin Van Lun is taking the lead by putting six different creative animations on his website (=this website). This makes him the first in the world to make such a creative expression part of a personal brand strategy.
The small icons can be seen in the address bar, favourites and tabs when browsing with Firefox. For each tab there’s a different favicon. On opening the page the favicon will be still for a little while, to avoid irritation, but it’ll start to move subtly when the visitor stays on the same page for a while.
Van Lun’s animations consist of movements of his own head in combination with attributes. For example, in the ‘trend’-favicon he appears to be playing tug of war with himself (using a red thread he’s proverbially showing in trends).
Below are all the favicons, with the difference that they start immediately on opening the page. The real favicons start later to avoid irritation.
: Animation with my name. Typical personal brand strategy choice.
: a small sequence of gestures and emotions.
: busy with a pile of books.
: I’m busy with post-its.
: audience left, audience right, audience in the middle.
: always looking for the red thread.
The favicons only animate in Firefox. Currently 40% of the visitors to ErwinVanLun.com use Firefox. For his Dutch equivalent that’s only 20% of the visitors.
The creations fit seamlessly with his personal brand strategy. As a speaker Van Lun has developed a very strong ‘personal brand’ and wanted his animations to strengthen his brand.
Future Vision by Erwin Van Lun on this article
As a brand futurist he adds: “Personal brands will benefit from using their own face as logo and favicon. Furthermore this kind of development fits with the trend in which brands bring their logo to life, the brand visualisation. I hope to inspire commercial, innovative non-profit organisations as well as personal brands with this modest innovation.”
There are 15 reactions on this article
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Reaction by Nishadha op Feb 14th, 2009 10:39
Very interesting concept and very nicely done. I think this will be very useful for large sites like news sites that have different sections for different users. But if you are looking for personal branding this might get in the way since you are showing six different favicons for different sections. I suppose it all comes down to the audience of your blog and how useful they find it.