What matters in practice
Motion design is everything graphic that moves in the frame and was not filmed. It is neither animation nor VFX: an animated film tells its story entirely built, VFX alters footage in ways you are not meant to notice. Motion design sits visibly on top of the film and gives it structure.
In practice it falls into two groups:
- Labelling and brand. Lower thirds with name and role, opening and closing titles, chapter markers, an end card with contact details. Unremarkable individually, yet the most frequently repeated element of your brand guidelines in moving image.
- Explanation. A section through a wall build-up, the path air takes through a ventilation system, construction phases in time-lapse over the floor plan. In construction and building services in particular, the decisive part sits behind plaster or above a suspended ceiling. You cannot film it. You can draw it.
What we need, and usually get late
- The logo as a vector file (SVG, AI or EPS), not an image pulled from an email signature.
- The corporate typeface with a licence that covers moving image. Web and office licences frequently do not. If there is none, we choose a similar free typeface. A conversation better had beforehand than noticed afterwards.
- Names, job titles and spellings in writing. A lower third with the wrong job title is the classic trigger for an extra round of revisions.
Why changes cost more here than in the edit
A graphic is built, not chosen. Where the edit swaps one shot for another, an animation has to be rebuilt and rendered. Where text is fixed into the frame, every further language version means a second build. So we set up lower thirds, transitions and end card properly once and carry them forward. From the second film onwards, motion design becomes the cheapest item rather than the most surprising one.