Motion Graphics in Ireland

Motion graphics design from a Dublin studio

Motion graphics is animation without characters. Type, icons, shapes, charts and logos move on screen to carry a message. It reads as clean and professional rather than cartoon, which is why it suits corporate communication, data, products and anything going in front of a business audience. We make motion graphics in our Dublin studio for organisations across Ireland.

Where motion graphics earn their place

Statistics are the obvious one. A number that sits flat in a report becomes something people remember when it builds on screen, especially with a comparison beside it. If you already have an infographic, animating it is often the quickest way to get it onto social media.

Silent screens are the other. Waiting rooms, receptions, trade stands and conference stages all show video with the sound off. Motion graphics carry the whole message in type, so they work there in a way that a narrated video does not.

Then there is everything that sits around other video: animated titles, lower thirds naming a speaker, end cards, and an animated logo to open and close each film. And product feature videos, where a phone screen or a dashboard is shown with animated callouts pointing to what matters.

Motion graphics built to a brand system

Motion graphics live or die on typography, which means they are only as good as the discipline behind them. The strictest brief we have worked to was a twenty second patient education film for Benecol, shown silently on GP waiting room screens.

The specification named the typefaces with no substitutions allowed anywhere, including the smallest line on the final frame. It set weights for titles, subheadings and body text, held line spacing between 120 and 140 percent, and limited colour to four approved values. The final round of notes came down to a missing space and a word sitting outside the safe area at the bottom of frame. That is the level of care motion graphics need when a brand is on the line.

Designing for a viewer who is not listening

Most motion graphics are watched on mute, so the writing matters as much as the movement. Each line has to be short enough to take in at a glance and stay on screen long enough to finish reading, while leaving room for the next. In twenty seconds that comes to a handful of statements, so every one has to earn its place.

We work that out with you before animating anything. It is much cheaper to cut a line from a script than from a finished film.

Motion graphics designers or a studio?

You can hire a freelance motion graphics designer, and for one off social clips that can be the right call. What a studio adds is the design around the movement: the same people who build your brand graphics and social media templates make the motion work, so it matches everything else you put out.

For the wider picture, our blog post on how motion graphics work in branding and marketing goes into more detail, and our video production page covers every type of animation we make.