Starling’s Motion Identity
Project
Buff Motion helps define Starling's post-rebrand motion identity through strategic animation framework
Published
July 2026
Agency
Buff Motion
The motion-first creative studio partnered with Starling to create a scalable motion system alongside a campaign of 16 social films, establishing a new benchmark for how the digital bank communicates through animation.
Following Starling’s 2025 brand refresh, Brighton-based motion-first creative studio Buff Motion has revealed its role in developing the bank's motion identity, creating not only a campaign of feature-led social films but a strategic framework designed to shape how the brand moves across future communications.
The scale and importance of the campaign made it the ideal moment to formalise how the newly refreshed brand should behave in motion.
Commissioned to produce a series of short films highlighting features across Starling's app and website, Buff saw an opportunity to tackle a broader challenge.
Rather than treating the project as a standalone production, the studio worked with Starling to establish the principles, behaviours and animation language that would define the bank's motion system going forward.
“The brief quickly became about much more than creating social content, Starling’s brand isn't built around wealth. It’s built around confidence. What I particularly loved about this project was being trusted to define how that confidence should translate into motion.
We pulled out the brand's core tonal attributes and developed a motion language built around direct, purposeful movement with a playful human confidence. That shaped these films while giving Starling a framework for future work.”
Tom Allen
Creative Director at Buff
The project extended beyond the finished films. To ensure consistency throughout production and beyond, Buff developed a comprehensive guide documenting the creative principles, technical approach and animation behaviours behind the work.
Originally intended as an internal production resource, the guide was ultimately delivered to Starling's in-house team to support future projects and maintain consistency across the evolving brand.
For Buff, the project demonstrates the value of treating motion as part of a brand system, rather than simply a production output.
As organisations scale content across more teams, channels and touchpoints, maintaining recognisable brand behaviour has become just as important as maintaining visual consistency. This project shows how a clear motion framework can improve product communication, create consistency across campaigns and give in-house teams the tools to build on a brand with confidence long after the original work has been delivered
