Interaction Design · Project 1 of 3 · Weeks 1–5
Motion Graphics Project 2: Kinetic Typography
Language in motion
FORMAT
Individual
WEEKS
5-10
METHODS
Adobe Illustrator · Storyboarding · Animatic · Adobe After Effects · Keyframing · Easing · Shapes and masks · Expressions · Sound design · Presentation
TAGS
Aesthetic Psychology, Time Based Media, Narrative, Design Education, Design Thinking
Why this project
Kinetic typography asks a specific question: what happens when language moves? The letterform is already a designed object — shaped by centuries of decisions about proportion, weight, and spacing. When it animates, every decision about timing, trajectory, and rhythm becomes a typographic decision. Students who understand this produce work that is genuinely different from students who treat type as content to be moved around the screen.
The Brief
PROJECT PROMPT
Kinetic typography is the technical name for moving text. In this project, you will generate a motion graphic visualization of a significant quote — using primarily typographic characters to express and match an audio source you select.
The audio can come from a film, television program, cut scene, or spoken word recording. Create a transcript, then storyboard and animate typographic layouts timed to the delivery. The focus is on basic transformation properties — scale, rotation, position, opacity — as tools for exploring the duration and sequence of language. Color should be minimal (approximately three values). Type selection and composition are deliberate design decisions, not defaults.
Technical specs: approximately 30–60 seconds, 720 × 480 pixels, 29.97 fps, submitted as .mov or .mp4.
DELIVERABLE
Script selection and written analysis: why this text, what it requires
Mood board: typeface research, motion references, visual tone
Storyboard: minimum 12 frames, hand-drawn, 16:9 format
Animatic: timed to full duration of script
Final kinetic typography piece: rendered video file
Concept statement: 150–250 words
Process documentation: research, sketches, in-process screen grabs, critique notes
Self-assessment — see separate assignment sheet
What I've learned from running this
Students respond well to this project. There is real pleasure in watching words move — in finding the rhythm that matches the meaning of a phrase, in discovering that a single letter held one frame longer changes everything. The students who thrive are those who already have a relationship with typography. They understand nuance. They can hear the difference between a typeface that is whispering and one that is shouting, and they know how to make that distinction visible in motion.
The students who struggle are those for whom typography is still primarily functional — a vehicle for information rather than a designed object with its own expressive range. That gap is one I am still figuring out how to address in the structure of the course. Whether the answer is more scaffolding before the project begins, or whether the difficulty is itself pedagogically valuable, is a question I expect to sit with for another iteration.
