Otto for Square

Intelligent Creativity in Motion

Our Role

Art Direction, Concept Development, Motion Graphics, Research and Strategy, Product Definition, UI / UX Design, Design and Development, Video Direction

Collaborators

Square

Brand expression on the move

Open ideals

Creativity powered by code and harnessed by teams

Brand expression on the move. Athletics collaborated with Square to develop their motion identity system to unite Square around common ideals, rules, and tools, yielding a more open and inspiring brand experience.

Open ideals. Square's brand-wide creative concept of "Open" led us to instate four overarching motion ideals, used to retain consistency across all motion assets created by Square.

Creativity powered by code and harnessed by teams. To allow internal teams to easily utilize the new motion system, Athletics developed Otto, a bespoke generative motion asset creator.

Motion assets for everything

Otto is a web application that provides a completely intuitive workflow accessible by Square anywhere in the world. It’s UI  allows for the manipulation of a full range of inputs (imagery, color, copy, direction, speed, and much more). Users can then easily output motion assets in a range of formats used across web, marketing, video, social and products. Wherever Square’s brand is expressed in motion, Otto delivers the right assets instantly.

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Innovation through empowerment

Otto is a celebration of Square’s commitment to brand innovation by empowering every Square employee to take pride in being an author and contributor to the Square brand. It is optimized for everyone by synthesizing operational efficiency, ease of use for internal adoption, and boundless creative expression.

Excellence driven by iteration

Creative and technology teams worked together using an iterative sprint-based approach. Motion explorations and technology constraints informed one another to arrive at a core suite of brand expressions in motion. UX evaluation and user acceptance testing were used as inputs to ensure Otto’s motion tools were the easiest and most flexible to use. This deep collaboration between teams allowed for Square’s brand principles to drive creative and technology decisions making. Otto is a testament to the power of intelligent creativity at work. Strategists, creatives and technologists leveraged the strength of data, technology and human imagination to develop a truly expressive and creative business solution.

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Smart systems start with structure

In 2020, Square defined a new, brand-wide creative concept rooted in the idea of “Open.” Open connotes flexibility and freedom, but our task was to enforce consistency in motion across every touchpoint. In other words, we needed to use motion to bring structure to a creative concept that is inherently unstructured. That structure emerged in the form of four “ideals” that encapsulate the new Square motion identity, written to inspire fresh thinking about motion at Square, and guide the creation of high-impact, on-brand assets.

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