I was interested to see during a shopping trip into London today (in April, 2017) that the current ‘branding animation’ that is running on all of the Apple computers on show in a department store that I visited had something of the look and feel of some of my own animations (shown below).
This is probably a coincidence. I can’t imagine that the designers in Apple’s branding department were trawling the internet and happened to come across my work. And then chose to adopt some of its style. Although you never know. They have to keep their fingers on the pulse after all – although I’m not sure how on the pulse my videos are, as the video that the Apple animation most resembles is several years now.
The Apple animation, which I can’t find on the internet, and therefore can’t point you towards, features the leaf on the Apple logo detaching itself and replicating itself to form a rotating circle composed of multiple copies of itself, changing size and colour but always retaining a degree of graphic simplicity.
The animation sequence to me had something of the feel of mine. Of course it may only be me who sees any resemblance, due to my heightened sensitivity towards the design factors of the work I created. My work uses circles rather than leaf-shaped lozenges, my circles interact where they overlay while Apple’s simply overlay, and mine are different colours, but that’s not much of a difference in my book.
Assuming that there IS a resemblance of some sort I’m not sure whether to be pleased that a company of Apple’s status is using a similar style to mine, and thus validating it, or be annoyed that a company of Apple’s status is using a similar style to mine, as people would inevitably say “Your animation’s inspired by Apple’s, isn’t it?”.
A longer version of this animation, with more variation in the movement, can be seen here: Animation