A (brief) history of motion design

Before describing the historical stages, I'll try to settle the limits of this discipline.

Can cartoons, for example, be considered motion design?

As I wrote in my previous article, the latter stems from animated graphics.

In my opinion, cartooning is more akin to animated illustration. But graphic design and illustration are two very different disciplines, and don't require the same expertise.

Although illustration is an essential component of graphic design, it is just as important as typography or photography. Graphic design communicates, illustration... illustrates (a text in most cases).

By analogy with motion design, cartooning is a component of it, just like shooting, or animated typography, but it's not the end-all, be-all. I'll confine myself here to the history of animated graphics.

Now that these limits have been set, when and how do you begin this specific discipline?

At the cinema

Prequel

The first graphics to appear on screen are the titles of the films, along with a long list of their contributors. These are fixed screens, mounted one after the other.

They're so boring that theaters don't open their curtains until the screens have finished playing.

It would take many years of visual experimentation before the idea of animating them and integrating them fully into films was born.

And these experiments began with the adventurers of painting in motion.

Among them were Walther Ruttmann, who introduced dance with Lichtspiel Opus I in 1921 (opposite), Hans Richter with Rythmus 21 and Oskar Fischinger with Wax Experiments.

These films are very similar to what could be done in motion design today, even if there are no commercial goals or stories.

In fact, it was demonstrated in 1944 that randomly animated geometric shapes triggered in most viewers the need to tell themselves a coherent story. It didn't take much more to lay the foundations for motion design.

Birth

In the 1930s, the film industry was booming, and big production companies were flourishing. It was at this time that logos, graphic creations par excellence, began to come to life on the web, like those of Universal Pictures, 20th Century Pictures Company and Paramount.

But it wasn't until 1954 that a graphic artist who had already proved his worth by revolutionizing the composition of film posters revolutionized film credits with Otto Preminger's Carmen Jones, bringing a narrative and emotional dimension never seen before.

The designer's name was Saul Bass, and he continued to create memorable film credits for another 40 years. Today, he remains a benchmark for all film credits creators.

The credits for Otto Preminger's The Man with the Golden Arm (opposite) are his second.

In 1960, the term "motion graphics" was finally popularized with the creation of Motion Graphics Inc. by John Whitney, a pioneer of electronic equipment dedicated to cinema since the 40s. He summarized his work at the time in a demo tape (a showreel) he called Catalog.

During these same years, Maurice Binder built his legend by making a name for himself with the famous credits of James Bond versus Dr No in 1962, an unforgettable moment in cinema.

On television

In parallel with the blossoming of film credits in cinema, television is increasingly becoming a vector for the dissemination of moving graphics, thanks to theanimation of the various channels'visual identities.

In the 1970s, a new technological innovation set the tone for logo animation at the time: the Scanimate. It's a device that controls the electrons in the cathode-ray tube to distort and animate projected images. It was the first computer dedicated to graphic animation.

Since the 80s, the MTV channel has made a name for itself with the overflowing creativity of its logo animations.

Renaissance

In 1995, back to the cinema with the credits for David Fincher's Se7en, reviving the art of the credits with a very dark typographic, iconic and musical choice. The viewer enters the film's universe with a rare intensity.

Directed by Kyle Cooper, this theme song inspired a whole new generation of moving-image artists, lulled by grunge and indus metal, and remains a landmark in the history of theme songs and motion design.

Computer graphics and the Internet

The 1990s saw the birth of computer-aided design and the Internet, a revolution that changed the world, and particularly the world of video images.

Motion design is increasingly easy to produce, thanks in particular to the arrival of software that can be installed directly on personal computers(After Effects in particular), competing with multimillion-franc machines reserved for the biggest studios.

And it's getting easier and easier to show off your work, thanks to the many rapid technological advances that have made it possible to reduce the size of videos, and speed up their download from the other side of the world.

This is how one of the new legends of motion design, Bradley G Munkowitz, aka GMunk, came to prominence with his film FINN (opposite), innovative in its design, narrative, rhythm and technique.

Today, motion design has invaded our daily lives: on social networks (with TikTok and YouTube in particular), mobile applications, billboards, video games, ... Video is a must.

It's never been easier to learn, test, experiment and get lost, and the arrival of a brand new player -artificial intelligence- suggests that many revolutions are in store for the next few years. One only has to look at the evolutionary curve of computer technologies and its sudden acceleration in recent years to understand that everything is likely to change again over the next ten years.

With the proliferation of films and series on streaming platforms, film credits still have a long way to go!

Does it speak to you? How would you write motion design today?