How to make better motion graphics and titles
Motion graphics or animation are a great way to enhance any corporate video and give it an added “wow factor”. The problem is that not everyone is a gifted graphic designer or animation maker, but luckily you don’t have to be in order to create some effective graphics. Below we’ve highlighted some simple tips on how to make better motion graphics for your latest corporate video or video marketing production.
Use branding to help you
It’s very likely that businesses will have branding guidelines for any artwork that is created for their use. This could just be as simple as size and colour information, but often logos and colour palettes will have been created by a dedicated graphic designer so there may be examples of previous work that you can use as a starting point.
Reflect the tone
Let the mood of the video provide a structure for the graphics. If the overall tone is gentle, consider fading artwork in. If the video is more like a high impact fitness video, you could design the graphics to crash in.
Use music
Music and sound effects can really bring motion graphics to life. If you haven’t considered bringing the soundtrack in underneath your motion graphics, give it a try. This effect works especially well with soundtracks that fade in, as the music will give you a bit of extra time to establish the tone of the video before you bring your footage or other assets in.
Bigger isn’t always better
The general rule about size is that if you design your title and something doesn’t seem right or you’re not sure about placement, the chances are you’ve made your text/other assets too big. Try scaling them back and re-positioning them and you may increase their effectiveness.
Avoid iMovie-like effects
Now that video editing and motion graphics software is becoming increasingly commonplace, standard home-movie effects that everyone recognises can look amateurish and a bit heavy-handed, which isn’t what you want for work that represents your company. That being said, some are simple enough to be appropriately used, for example the simple cross dissolve, or the ‘dip to white’ if you’re fading footage to a white solid. The same goes for font types – Comic Sans and Lucida Handwriting may have had their uses but as a standard font they have gone out of style. Do check branding guidelines where available if you can however, as you’ll most likely need to use a specific font.
Use professional assets
It may not be necessary for many projects, but you can buy professional animated or still image assets in packages to accompany or form the basis of your motion graphics. These can often be customised or manipulated easily in motion graphics software (such as Adobe After Effects) and have many appropriate uses. These are being developed all the time by various designers so you can always find inspiration for your own motion graphics and title design.
Our roots are in graphic design, so we learned these lessons through experience and took them to heart, and we’ve become better graphic designers as a result – use these tips to integrate better design in your company’s video production.
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