What I Learned From Kinetic Typography

I learned I love animation.

Let’s take a few steps back, though.

In the Autumn of 2017 I was a sophomore taking VCD 3, which is short for Visual Communication Design. The coursework leading up to that point had mostly been your run-of-the-mill graphic design stuff: design stationary, make a package for a product, make a lettermark, etc. Then VCD 3 hit. My class was floored by how different everything was. Instead of stamp design we had moved on to storyboarding scenes from our favorite movies. Instead of constructing hierarchy we were constructing narratives out of 2 hours’ worth of photos. Most importantly to me, however: Instead of cutting posters from their paper, we were cutting video.

I will admit this: I was not a fan of VCD 3. My goal was to become a designer, not to fritter my time on multimedia productions. We had to endure the gear-grinding switch from working in print to working in explicitly temporal medium of film… and that part is what I both loved and hated. On the one hand, it meant that we had to film a 3 minute video on the nature of beauty. On the other, however, it meant we got to dabble in Kinetic Typography. This is what made the class so utterly valuable.

As a kid I dabbled in stop motion, and so on some level to return to video was exciting. There was an allure to making inanimate objects seemingly come alive with the magic of video editing. However, it became increasingly difficult to make stop motion a worthy pasttime and eventually I just moved on. From that experience sprouted a lifelong respect and understanding of animation, however. When I returned to the concepts of animation as a sophomore in college (with the Adobe Suite on his laptop) I was ready to do something fantastic. So, combined with my budding understanding of typography and my love of animation, I ambitiously chose to animate two 30-second segments from music I dubbed “interesting and inspiring.”

Prior to VCD 3, I regarded typography as a simple part of graphic design: you make your design, then pick the type to fit the tone. As I began working on the kinetic typography project, however, I realized that Typographic choices have an immense influence on the tone of a composition, rather than the other way around. Instead of the letters being subject to the shape of the composition, the composition was directly informed and tonally-identified by the typographic choices. How did I learn this? Through having to wrestle with employing it well in kinetic typography: suddenly instead of type being simply a container for words it became elements on a screen. In other words the shapes of the letters began to matter to me on a visual level, rather than an informational one. Over the course of the project I grew to appreciate the illustrative qualities of the individual letters, too, as you’ll see later on.

And so, with a little bit of elbow grease and some radical ideas on what I could do with this newfound recombination of creative media, I set to work. I selected a clip from Rob Cantor’s “Actual Cannibal Shia LeBeouf” and Paul Simon’s “Wristband.” I was flush with creative energy, and even as I was stutteringly interrupted on account of my collegiate schedule I was laser-focused on making these two videos. I worked in AfterEffects, and after a little bit of proofing with pencil and paper I ditched sketching out storyboarding in favor of directly sketching movement on the computer or in my head. “Actual Cannibal Shia LeBeouf” (ACSL) was equal parts entertaining and thrilling— both to listen to and animate. “Wristband” was smooth with a bit of grit and rebelliousness. Both were crisp and rich with animatable ideas, and after a number of days cranking out the animations I was ready to upload.

The end result was a true achievement. I pushed my boundaries, made something fresh, and excelled among my classmates. Even today, as I rewatch and see many things I would change, I am still proud of the work I did then.

But that’s enough dithering on. Have a watch!

The first video is from Paul Simon’s “Wristband". I had a blast with this one— especially in animating the fist!

Below is the segment from ACSL. Also tons of fun to animate, and it’s got some innovative ideas I’m still proud of to this day. (Some cringey ones too, mind you)

There was a lot that went in to these two clips, but their final impact on me was a firm love of animation. My knowledge of typography increased tenfold, sure, and I began to appreciate kinetic typography a whole lot more, but both of these things pale in comparison to how much I learned to love animation. There are so many more stories to be told with movement and time than you can do with just a printed illustration or even a whole comic. There are so many more people that you can reach with something that catches their eye like an animated work does— and these projects are what coaxed my love of animation back to life.

I suppose the moral of the story is to try something fun and new, because you never know what passion a new avenue of expression will unearth from within.

Stay fresh, stay humble, stay creative.
- Matt