What is motion design? In simple terms, it is a form, a way, a convention, and a technique for creating animated, moving images. Motion design is used in the film industry, on television, and increasingly on the Internet — in mobile applications and web applications.
You will encounter motion design wherever movement, dynamics, change in time, or transformation of forms serve to add further meaning and express ideas and emotions.
It's used to improve the user experience and when visual or audiovisual attractiveness is a desirable, advisable, and necessary value.
The motion design career encompasses roles such as animator, creative director, concept artist, designer, editor, producer, and more.
It's safe to say that motion design is at the intersection of graphic design and animation, art and business, marketing communications, advertising, and storytelling.
Are You Interested In Motion Design?Let's start answering the question by saying what motion design is not. It's certainly not a new name for the art of traditional animation (e.g., cel animation, stop motion).
Although motion design uses animation techniques, it isn't about telling a story or creating a story in the literal sense of the word.
Creative motion design is focused on motion, which is why it is used in user interfaces of desktop, mobile, and web applications, as well as games and devices used every day.
Did You Know.The appeal of motion design is obvious. People naturally and automatically follow movement with their eyes. That is one of our evolutionary adaptive traits. Movement is attractive to us and sends an important message.
At the same time, movement:
The movement also makes distinguishing, giving meaning, significance, and prioritizing possible. With its help, you can identify what is important, more important, and the most important.
The natural expression of moving images allows them to reflect brands' personalities, bring them to life, and mold their style.
Thanks to movement and animation, it's possible to engage the app user more easily, create an emotional bond with them, and draw them into the world of branding—its values, emotions, and the experience it offers.
Motion graphic design enables you to establish an emotional connection with your customer base and increase the performance of your products. Of course, these aren't the only benefits of motion graphic design.
Let's look at the others.
Motion design allows you to convey information and concepts faster. Humans comprehend images and graphic effects much faster than written text. You can leverage this characteristic to create animated tutorials, explainer videos, and interactive graphs so that your users and customers can better understand your business.
Thanks to motion design, you can elevate your brand's storytelling by more effectively capturing user attention. It allows you to create concise and simple messages, fostering understanding. You can easily incorporate your brand's tone of voice and present your business from a perspective that will resonate with users.
Motion design can make all the difference in your marketing efforts. Creating memorable, animated logos, graphics, and videos will allow you to capture user and customer attention. It will also enable you to connect emotionally with the audience to strengthen their relationship with the brand.
Motion design marketing can be very cost-effective because you don't have to create complex animations; simple tutorial videos and marketing material will suffice.
Motion graphic design can significantly improve the conversion rate by guiding users' attention to important elements like CTA buttons or forms. It's crucial to remember that cluttering landing pages with motion design elements can hurt conversion, so designers should strike a balance and encourage users instead of overwhelming them.
Too many animated objects will also hurt your website's performance, so keep that in mind during the design process.
Motion design can also enhance the usability of your product by providing users with clear visual cues that help them understand what is happening on a website. Page loaders, changing button shapes, and informative animations enable you to increase user comfort by assuring them that the system correctly processes the actions they take. You effectively increase their sense of safety.
The usefulness of motion design in business is primarily expressed in its performance. Animations make it possible to convey and process information quickly, particularly in complex projects. Application users and customers see them as useful.
Performance also includes production cost, production time, and technical issues (e.g., those related to a website's loading speed and application operation).
Did You Know.Traditional pictures often leave a feeling of dissatisfaction. They're static and often emotionally indifferent. On the other hand, videos are much more complicated in terms of production, post-production, budget, and online usability.
If a picture is worth 1,000 words, then animation doubles that performance. Users are used to such messages; they expect them and see them as highly appealing and professional.
It's important to remember that each visit and view has a purpose. The purpose is usually to learn more about a product, service, or brand.
The quicker and more seamless the process, the faster the user can achieve their goals and the more satisfied they are.
Motion design has an extensive range of applications. It's a functional element that effectively fulfills the expectations set before it.
Animations are short and not seen as intrusive, disturbing, or unnecessary. They also don't weigh much and are compatible with most web browsers.
They provide users with a comfortable, very positive experience, which is extremely significant from a user experience perspective.
Motion design is very helpful for presenting products in online stores. Animations allow you to show their attributes, advantages, and how they work.
They help present products whose proportions, sizes, detail, and mechanisms determine their appeal.
It also works well for service presentations (e.g., showing the stages of cooperation in the popular step-by-step formula). You can also use motion design to increase the attractiveness and usability of all kinds of tutorials and guides.
In branding, the usability of motion design is also invaluable.
It turns a static brand into a more attractive, exciting, and vibrant one. It broadens the scope of emotional impact and deepens involvement. It improves its memorability and recognizability.
Industry professionals know movement is appealing, stirs emotions, attracts attention, engages, and increases satisfaction. It's much more enjoyable than text, images, or graphics.
It's an easy-to-understand message, and from the user experience point of view, it is simply invaluable.
Motion design is also used to create application prototypes. Animations facilitate the presentation of a concept to all stakeholders.
Thanks to the motion design, you can "feel," understand and accept a future digital product.
There are a couple of motion design principles that you need to keep in mind while designing your products. Learning about them will provide your team with knowledge that can be used to make informed design decisions and eliminate guesswork.
The easing principle involves designing an object's movement as naturally as possible. Motion designers must pay attention to how objects move and at what speed in different circumstances. Sometimes, objects need to move slower, and sometimes, they gradually speed up. It's important to remember this to create a natural feeling of moving objects.
Offset and delay allow a motion designer to show the relationship between elements and their hierarchy. For example, by animating objects so that they show up one after the other, a designer can signal to the user that they're connected.
A designer can also highlight the hierarchy between objects by displaying, for instance, the title of a presentation first before other graphic and typographic elements.
The parenting principle is similar to the offset and delay because both help motion designers establish relationships between objects. In the case of parenting, however, it's about linking two objects together by creating one parent object and child elements. The movement of child elements will depend on the movement of the parental object.
Transformation in motion design is about objects changing states and transitioning from one shape to another. This principle can help signal to the user a state change and provide an understandable system response. For example, it can be used for buttons so that when the user hovers over a clickable button, it changes shape from a rectangle to a rectangle with rounded corners.
Motion designers use value change to visualize the progress of an action or to signal to the user that their action took effect. You can often see this principle in action in the case of volume sliders, where the number going up or down indicates the volume change. It's also frequently used in progress bars to show the user the status of a process in action.
The masking principle consists of hiding an object inside of another one so that only a part of it is visible at certain times. This allows motion designers to establish relationships between the objects and their utility.
Additionally, it enables designers to hide less relevant parts of a design so that the user can navigate the app freely. When they need to see the details, they need to click on an element that will reveal the mask.
Motion designers use overlays to allow users to use multiple screens on top of each other. You can often encounter them on mobile devices; for example, a texting app may use overlays to allow its users to reply to messages without needing to exit the application they're currently on. Such layered visual effects increase the feeling of depth and spatial hierarchy.
Cloning involves creating similar-looking objects, for example, after interacting with a main object. Motion designers can use it to conceal additional menu options. For example, when the user clicks on a circular button, more similar-looking buttons appear with different icons indicating different options.
Similar to the overlay principle, the obscuration principle involves obscuring a part of a design to display another. It can be used in forms, especially on mobile devices, where fields are blurred so that users can focus on the one they're currently filling out.
In the case of motion graphics, motion designers can use it to achieve the effect of revealing elements one after the other.
Parallax in motion design means that two objects move simultaneously but at different speeds. This principle is usually employed to create depth while users scroll. Faster elements catch users' attention better than slow-moving ones.
Dolly and zoom are effects that allow motion designers to catch user attention by making objects appear closer or farther away from the user. The name comes from cinematography, where the change in camera zoom enables the audience to focus their attention on a given element.
This change in perspective enables users to get closer to a picture or other graphic element to examine it more closely. This can be used in e-commerce clothing stores to give customers a better look at clothes so they can, for example, examine the material they're made from.
Dimensionality in motion design is used to create an illusion of depth by making objects fold, flip, and drag. Motion designers can use it to make a smooth transition between screens or capture user attention by making graphic elements more interactive.
What can you create using graphic motion design? The answer is that there are no limits; it depends on the creativity of your design team. However, some helpful examples can help you get inspired and show where and how the motion design can be used.
Explainer graphics in motion design projects aim to explain complex ideas and processes to the audience. They allow you to convey your ideas or instructions in a more engaging manner that is easier to comprehend compared to plain text. This type of graphic is usually used in a video whose goal is to serve as a tutorial.
Explainer motion graphics can be extremely helpful for introducing challenging to understand concepts to the audience in a simple and easy manner.
Kinetic typography involves animating text to make it expressive and compelling. It's also commonly found in videos. It shouldn't be overused because it will lose its novelty effect and decrease user engagement. You can use it in promotional videos or the abovementioned explainer motion graphics.
Animated infographics have a similar purpose to explainer graphics. They aim to visualize information and data so users can better understand it. Thanks to movement and seamless transitions, motion designers can increase the memorability of the information. This applies not only to users but also to presentations made for stakeholders.
Additionally, it allows UX designers to deliver a unique user experience even during mundane activities like presenting and analyzing data.
Motion designers can use motion graphics to enhance the quality of promotional materials by making them more eye-catching and engaging. It allows them to communicate messages more effectively and in an easy-to-understand way. Motion in marketing can be used in logos, campaign materials, social media, and more.
Motion design in branding is used to better visualize the brand's identity and present its image from a different and more dynamic perspective. The primary aim of motion design in branding is to make your brand more memorable to your target audience. Motion designers can achieve this effect by creating designs that evoke emotions and allow users to engage.
Motion graphics can enrich your landing pages and make them more eye-catching. You can use them instead of a static image hero to boost engagement. They also enable you to quickly communicate the most important aspects of your business and direct users to their desired destinations.
You can use such motion graphics as animated CTA buttons, page loaders, or background animations.
Motion design in social media will enable you and your social media managers to customize your posts and make your communications more effective. Depending on your brand's tone and voice, you can use fun animations to get closer to users and make your brand more relatable.
As you can see, hiring a motion designer or a motion designer team can provide many benefits to your business, such as attracting new users, increasing the memorability and recognizability of your brand, and establishing long-lasting relationships with the customer base.
