Austin Shaw - Design for Motion: Motion Design Techniques and Fundamentals

Motion Design Techniques & Fundamentals

Written by: Austin Shaw Edited by: Danielle Shaw

Design for Motion

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my daughters Athena Blue and Chloe Shaw, who remind me to be curious. And, to my father Larry Shaw, who always believed in my words.

Contents

viii Contents

Contents ix

x Contents

Contents xi

Contributors xiii

Contributors

Professional Perspectives Industry Contributors

Beat Baudenbacher

William Campbell

Patrick Clair

Lindsay Daniels

Bran Dougherty-Johnson Karin Fong

Chace Hartman

Lauren Hartstone

Greg Herman

Will Hyde

Will Johnson

Kylie Matulick

Bradley G Munkowitz (GMUNK) Daniel Oefnger

Robert Rugan

Erin Sarofsky

Matt Smithson

Carlo Vega

Alan Williams

Danny Yount

Lucas Zanotto

Additional Professional Contributors

Evan Goodell

Nath Milburn

Paige Striebig

Student Contributors Joe Ball

Nathan Boyd Vanessa Brown Daniel Chang

Peter Clark

CJ Cook

David Conklin Casey Crisenbury Jason M. Diaz

Eric Dies

Jackie Khanh Doan Gautam Dutta Taylor English Kalin Fields

Chris Finn

Rainy Fu

Ben Gabelman Preston Gibson Caresse Haaser Chase Hochstatter John Hughes

Sarah Beth Hulver Dominica Jane Jordan Rick Kuan

Hyemin Hailey Lee Scott Cheng Yi Lim Ana Cristina Lossada Jordan Lyle

Nick Lyons

Stasia Luo

Madeline Miller Alonna Morrison Robert Morrison Jr. Eddy Nieto

Sara Odze

Lauren Peterson Raffael Pindell Patrick Pohl

Lexie Redd

Graham Reid Ryan Brady Rish Chris Salvador Keliang Shan Yeojin Shin Sekani Solomon Jordan Taylor Daniel Uribe Audrey Yeo

Faculty Contributors Michael Betancourt

John Colette Dominique Mertens Elliot James Gladman

Minho Shin

Woon (Duff) Yong

Foreword xv

Foreword

Justin Cone

Something subtle but revolutionary happened over the last decade. No one noticed, but it happened in plain sight, on blogs and social media and on stages at conferences around the world. An accepted term used by thousands of designers and lmmakers quietly shed its skin and did something marvelous: it matured.

The term was motion graphics, an awkward, always plural construction in heavy use by lmmakers and broadcasters with roots that snake back to at least the 1960s. While the term is still in use today, its rapidly giving way to its wiser and more relevant successor, motion design. That simple change is a silent earthquake, the shock waves of which will quietly upend communication practices across industries for decades to come.

How can a one-word change possibly matter so much? First, it helps to dene motion design, which turns out to be a complicated feat. Both motion design and motion graphics are derived from the same longer term: motion graphic design, a frustratingly vague concept.

Looked at one way, motion graphic design is about the design of graphics used in the context of moving images. A helpful example: designing a map that appears over the shoulder of a newscaster during the nightly news. In the parlance of broadcast television, the map is a graphic, a composite of

elements superimposed onto a stream of live-action

footage.

Theres nothing wrong with this denition of motion graphic design. Its accurate. But its also limiting. It runs dry long before describing everything motion design has become over the last 50 years or so. Theres another interpretation of motion design that turns out to be a fount of possibility. It requires a slight rearrangement of the words and the addition of a preposition so that you get graphic design in motion. This seemingly supercial change is the key to understanding the true power of the eld and why the book youre reading is a doorway to the future.

Graphic design rose to power in the twentieth century, when mass media and advertising combined to wallpaper the world with messaging of all kinds. While radio and television increasingly dominated the airwaves, graphic design dominated everything else, enjoying a kind of ubiquity previously unseen in the world. From packaging to billboards to periodicals, graphic design not only forced its way into everyones eld of vision, it also earned respect as a vocation. Graphic designers shared symposium panels and respected professorships with even the most revered practitioners of design: architects. While the latter specialized in the built world, graphic designers crafted worlds of

xvi Foreword

impossible. This book distills what we know so far. But its more than a shortcut through the wilderness. Its a reminder of the richness of motion design. There is perhaps no other eld that draws so heavily on such a wide variety of creative disciplines, including (but not limited to) painting, illustration, writing, graphic design, animation, lmmaking, visual effects, sound design, music composition, computer science, and, on occasion, choreography. The master motion designer has a deep, enduring appreciation for all of these disciplines and more.

* * *

I adore Milton Glaser. Famous for his iconic I NY visual slogan, he is one of the most prolic graphic designers of the last 100 years. His creations have adorned museum walls, lled textbooks, and papered city streets since the 1940s. But he really messed up back in 2012.

In an interview with Brendan Dawes, Mr. Glaser said: Someone asked me the other day what I do all day, and I said, I move things around until they look right. And I suspect that thats as good a denition of graphic design as I could come up with.

Taken out of context, this idea can save you tens of thousands of dollars. Why go to school when all you need to learn is how to move things around? There must be a tutorial online somewhere for learning to move things around!