Motion Design Analysis

By Zoe Serodio

In this assignment, I´m going to come through the meaning of motion design from my point of view.
Also, I´m going to describe how technology did change in the last decades and how did affect that to
motion designers. I will end up with describing some work of Saul Bass and Dennis Hoogstad by
writing about some elements such as composition, motion flow, colour theory and emotional values.

Hope you´ll enjoy it 😊

 What is Motion Design?

Motion design is the art of creating elements and giving them movement as they were in real life by
using a digital platform.

Motion design is an abbreviation of motion graphics design. But, what does graphic design means? It
is the process of creating a concept with figures such as circles, rectangles, etc. Also, you can add
some text to that design to make it more clear. Evey good design is created from a good concept.

We can say that the process of making a motion graphics design is divided into three different parts.
These are what do you want to communicate, design and give it movement.

Animation is what involves motion design but we can see some differences between them. Normally
when we think about animation our mind is going to think of a cartoon taking part in storytelling,
that’s because is what traditional animation has been created for. But by the early 50s motion design
came to explote. Thanks to Saul Bass geometric figures played around title sequences in films
became more frequently seen.

This is all fine but maybe you’ll be asking, what does a motion designer do? We could say they are
only creating nice videos through the internet, but we will be feeling it like a short definition. A
motion designer is that person who has creativity enough to transport you to another world as
you’re looking at his work. He or she can persuade you to buy a product or even just to continue
watching what they are showing you. He or she can also play with your emotions, you’re going to do
what they want you to do. This could all sound a bit manipulated but actually, he or she can also
make what you’re studying a bit more interesting by watching some explainer animated video they
made. You can always learn something new with their work.

Here are some examples you can look at to help you understand a bit more about what is motion
graphics.

Starting in the 1950s Saul Bass was making title film sequences. And there is when motion graphics
seemed to be more present, a good example for it is his first mostly recognised work, created for the
Man with the Golden arm film back in 1955.

The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) title sequence

Continue talking about Saul Bass he also created the Kinetic typography, which means “text moving”
that´s a mixture of motion and text. And we can see an example with his title sequence in the film
North by Northwest created in 1959.

Saul Bass: North by Northwest (1959) title sequence

A new trend came in the 2012s called flat design. This type of animation was created thanks to
graphic design, which was the first one to make shapes like lines, rectangles, circles, etc. And bring
them into the art of design.

Cycle of Life - Animated Short Film (Flat Animation)

Explainer videos became popular in the same year, they were really helpful to people understanding
how to use the product they are interested in. They also were a good idea to explain the simplicity of
the program/product and highlight that so new clients would arrive. Here we can see an example of
an explainer video made by 2015s

Custom Explainer Video - Gigwalk

GIFs even they came from a long time ago, thanks now to social media they became a good tool for
promoting a brand, increasing the audience attention or quickly explaining a process.

Digital marketing Solution Gif

And finally, Neon tren came viral again last year in 2020. In this piece created by NotReal for Nike,
we can see that is a 3D piece, and is that motion design could be made in very different ways. It´s an
old concept to think about motion graphics and only thinking about a 2D animation. We are now in
the 3D decade.

NIKE - Gumball Pack

How did technology affect the industry of motion graphics?

1
Based on the explained video “What´s motion design?” from Motion Plus Design posted on Vimeo on the
2011 year. https://vimeo.com/29732896
In the last 20 years, technology has gone through a big change. Smartphones, social media, VR&AR
(virtual & augmented reality), online freelancing, etc. They all came to stay and keeping them
learning is the best thing motion designers could do.

If we started talking about smartphones the first iPhone appeared in 2007, but not everyone could
afford one until Android came along. So by the 2010s, we’ve all had a smartphone in our pocket. If
we talked about smartphones we’re also talking about social media, which is the whole point of this
industry. By the same year we’ve all had our smartphones, Instagram and new Twitter were
presented to all users, people could post whatever they want that it was going to be worldwide
visible. Now designers can be exposed easily.

Tablets also appeared in 2010 with the first iPad. Thanks to Apple designers now can have their own
portable digital drawing pads to make their figures as characters, logos, etc. Web design is becoming
more important and there are new types of format designers need to get used to.

Talking about VR&AR (virtual and augmented reality) by the time Google designed the Google Glass
back in 2014, AR is starting to be more accessible to the general public, which combines graphic
design, animation and photography in real time.

An important change to motion graphics designers occurred in 2011 when Adobe software create
Creative Cloud, now designers will have access to all the apps, but they will need to get a
subscription fee. And that was the reason designers were not too happy about it, even though
Adobe promised to have new updates more frequently than before.
Another good point to highlight is coming also in 2011 when new platforms as Coursera and
Skillshare made design education more accessible to the public. They teach people how to use the
creativity they have. Lots of new designers had been able to develop new techniques thanks to these
sites.

By the same decade, something was going on that helped motion graphics designers sell their work
and have their business marketplace, this is called online freelancing, it also makes it easier to be
contacted by companies.

For all these years it could have been different trends going on but nowadays every artist has his
personality and thanks to that we have a lot of different work styles going on. I am going to look
through some motion designers and what their work was based on. Also, I will discuss some of their
work and what emotional values they communicate.

2
Inspiration from the article “The evolution of design from 2010 to 2020: Looking back at a decade of design”
written by Johnny Levanier in the year 2019. https://99designs.ie/blog/design-history-movements/evolution-
of-design-2010-2020/
 Saul Bass – Anatomy of a murder (1959)3

When the graphics design world was only about to come over into peoples lives, Saul Bass started
creating new ways of making motion design and thanks to his minimalistic style, he inspired a lot of
different artists even in actuality. In some of his projects, he worked with his wife Elaine Bass but the
title sequence Anatomy of a murder was made by himself.

The music matches perfectly with the names and elements going on through the screen. If you close
your eyes and only pay attention to the music it will be easy to recognise when the action is
changing. So we could say there´s a flow that goes between the music, the credits and the different
parts of the body.

The camera is static but sometimes you can feel that has got some movement because of the
transitions. These transitions are combined with the arms, legs, head and torso coming out of the
screen into the camera lenses.

I don´t feel a sense of stability because there´s a lot of diagonals going on. Even though I also can
find it relevant that there´s a bit of weighing between the elements due to the pathway, they are
introduced as straight horizontal and vertical lines.

3
Made by Saul Bass in the year 1959. https://www.artofthetitle.com/title/anatomy-of-a-murder/
No second actions are going on and we can see a repetitive structure every time it´s made a
transition. This structure is formed with the first action when the part of the body is introduced, then
the letters came in front of the element, letters disappear and the element goes a little after. Thanks
to that structure it keeps the viewer´s eye trace from the screen.

There´s a lot of negative space that allows our eyes to go around. There are also some parts with no
frame that make the figures not have an end, this fact gives us a sense of instability.

You can feel some echoing going through the fingers and toes, but also going through the arms and
legs.
In terms of colour, it has been used a black and white colour pallet. In which there´s no hue or
saturation, but we have three types of brightness, which are: high brightness from the letters, it is
the white colour which stands out from the background and body parts; medium brightness from
the background, it´s the grey colour, it has been used a mid-tone, neutral colour so it doesn´t
highlight from the other elements; low brightness from the body parts.

By that time there were no colours on television, but this black and white give us a sense of a
mysterious film.

Finally, my last conclusion of this Saul Bass work makes me feel that I´ll be watching a creepy and
dramatic movie.
 Dennis Hoogstad – There is always a way (2016)4

Artist and animator with over fifteen years of experience. Even he is from the 21st century he uses
minimalistic shapes in his work, just as Saul Bass. We could say he got inspiration from his work.
Dennis Hoogstad also likes to use bold colours in all of his projects.

There is always a way was created to make people conscious about the different solutions they can
find whenever they have a problem that they need to solve.

The music expresses calm, he wants to tell us that we don´t need to worry about anything, we just
need to be relaxed. Then this melody changes into a nice optimistic piece, giving us a good feeling
and a quite funny way to look at it. We also can notice a little bounce every time the ball touches the
floor making it more realistic.

As I express there is also optimistic energy flowing through the space. This flow goes with the ball
every time it changes into a different scenario. It also makes the transitions come smoothly.

4
By Dennis Hoogstad created in 2016. https://vimeo.com/dennishoogstad
As in the work of Saul Bass (Anatomy of a murder), the camera is static, which could give us a sense
of stability that is joined by the horizontal and vertical lines. But the artist also wanted to give us a
sense of uncomfortable space and unstable ground, so he uses vertical and circular lines on the
elements the ball passes through. This could mean that the obstacles are not always easy to pass
through but, as the title says, there is always a way.

Second actions going on in every styleframe, as the ball moves around the space, which is the
primary action (where we focus our eye on), other elements are moving as well and we could
perfectly see some principles of animation as the squash and stretch, staging, slow in and slow out,
arcs and secondary action among others.

Negative space is used to focus our vision on the circular energy that is going on. Dennis Hoogstad
used the little ball to keep the viewer´s eye traced, and we can see that during the whole video.

The colour palette is composed of bold colours, every colour has got medium saturation and high
brightness. In the colour wheel, they are represented as analogous. In terms of hue, we can identify
blue and red. As they are soft colours they give us a sense of relaxation and calm.

To conclude, the whole video is giving me a sense of calm and without worries about the challenges
could that appear in my life. It inspires motivation by telling that there is always a way to pass them
through.

By comparing these two artists, even though they are from different centuries, we can see in them
that they have the same minimalistic style. In terms of composition, they like to match the music
perfectly with what´s going on the screen. As they have a minimalistic style, they like to use a lot of
negative space making the path viewers eyes more easily to recognise. If we talk about colour we
could say that Saul Bass prefered to use a highly saturated colour palette as we can see in some
other of his works other than Dennis Hoogstad.

Finally speaking in terms of emotional values they communicate, Saul Bass goes more into the
dramatic, creepy world other than Dennis Hoogstad that prefers the sense of calm and relaxation.