Motion Graphics Designer Related Career Paths

Motion Graphics Designers exist at the crossroads of animation and graphic design. That opens up not just one, but two different fields you can pursue as your career evolves. Interests change, different opportunities present themselves, and life takes unexpected turns. Still, a background in motion design can serve you well as a stepping stone to other roles. Of course, that’s not to say that you can’t make a long and successful career in motion design on its own.

What is a Motion Graphics Designer?

Motion graphics shouldn’t be confused with character animation (such as you see in classic Disney movies.) Motion graphics are, rather, graphic design elements to which animators give the illusion of life. Although motion graphics existed before the 1950s, that decade is when the field came into its own, originally through the medium of animated main-title sequences for motion pictures.

The openings of Billy Wilder’s The Seven-Year Itch (1955) and Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest (1959) are prime examples of the groundbreaking sequences that set the tone for the movie to come. Both are the work of this type of animation’s key pioneer, Saul Bass. The two opening sequences combine kinetic typography, graphic devices, and drawn images. The result is opening credits that grab the audience’s attention. Bass’ tour de force was the six-minute end credit sequence for Michael Todd’s Around the World in Eighty Days (1956), which provides an entire synopsis of the movie in the form of kinetic sketches while the names of the actors with cameo roles in the film go by. It remains the ne plus ultra of end credits.

As far as the ne plus ultra of motion graphics at the start of a movie is concerned, the palm probably goes to the original Star Wars movie (recte: A New Hope.) The celebrated crawl that runs from the bottom of the screen to an imagined vanishing point in the middle of the screen was designed by Dan Perri, although the technique that held audiences spellbound for a minute and a half in 1977 actually dates back to the 1930s and both the Flash Gordon serials and Cecil B. De Mille’s Union Pacific, in which the disappearing crawl is superimposed on a pair of railway tracks.

In 1977, George Lucas had no choice but to lay the titles out on the floor and run the camera over them. With the subsequent advent of computer animation, such processes could be done virtually at the click of a mouse (and, in fact, the original Star Wars titles were redone using the new technology for later releases.) The ability to create computer-generated images with programs such as Adobe After Effects has completely transformed the motion graphics design industry. Creators now have a virtually unlimited toolbox at their disposal, and the days of awkwardly moving the camera to create the illusion of moving titles are long gone. Whereas the bounds of the possible were the problem faced by Motion Graphics Designers in the days of Saul Bass, the problem today is one of not doing too much and making sure the technology doesn’t become an end in itself. (A good example of doing an enormous amount with the available technology while still creating something satisfying and intelligible is the main title sequences for HBO’s Game of Thrones.)

Behind these little visual miracles sits the Motion Graphics Designer, who exists at the junction of graphic design and animation. To be good at this job, you need the graphic designer’s eye and sense of the visually attractive as well as the ability to operate the software software such as Adobe After Effects. The Motion Graphics Designer is responsible for both the vision and the execution, which are two very different processes, one that often requires traditional artists’ media, and one that calls for a computer. As a result, you’re unlikely to get bored being a Motion Graphics Designer.

Animator

Motion Graphics Design is, of course, a branch of animation. Rather than animating characters such as a put-upon princess, a murderous stepmother, and a prime number of dwarfs, Motion Designers animate graphics. The chief software they employ, Adobe After Effects, can, however, be used to give people and animals the illusion of life. Should your instincts as an artist lead you away from pure motion design at some point, you can channel your abilities with After Effects into this different form of expression. If you’re trained in traditional artists’ media and know how to draw figures, the shift towards using After Effects for animating things other than graphics is well within your grasp. You’ll need to learn new skills such as storyboarding (or working from a storyboard), and acquire further software knowledge, but jumping from Motion Graphics Designer to Animator is well within the bounds of possibility. 

Video Editor

The shift from graphic animation to character animation usually involves stepping out of the marketing and advertising sphere into that of film production (commercials being, at heart, small films.) That new industry opens a variety of options to you as your career progresses. Compositor and Video Editor are among those possibilities. Compositors are entrusted with the responsibility for assembling complete animation sequences, while Video Editors are responsible for the assembling of a complete movie or commercial. Although you’ll mostly be putting the actual creation of animation behind you to become an editor, your work in that sphere will be able to benefit from your understanding of animated effects. Your experience with storyboarding will also do a great deal towards preparing you for composing filmed narratives. Of course, as wonderful as After Effects is, it’s not an editing tool, so, to become an editor, you’ll need to learn Adobe Premiere Pro, the current video editing software of choice. (Bonus: it interweaves itself seamlessly into After Effects, and the interfaces bear some similarity to each other.) You’ll have to learn how to tell a story in images and sound, but it’s not an impossible career pivot if you’re sufficiently interested and opportunity works in your favor. When one job starts leading to another and another, you can end up in some very unexpected places. The pivot from motion designer to video editor isn’t as far-fetched as some other realignments that people regularly make in the course of their careers.

Art Director/Creative Director

Another place to which a background in motion graphics design can lead you is the role of Art Director (and assistant art director before that.) The Art Director is the person responsible for the sum total of artistic assets in the production of a movie of any length, and, thus, for the movie’s entire look. Art Directors have motion designers under their purview, although that purview is a very great deal broader than that of motion graphics design, and includes everything that goes onto the screen, from digital assets to real-world design objects such as costumes, sets and props.

Creative Directors are, in many ways, the Art Directors of the advertising world. They have the responsibility for everything that an agency produces, both visual assets and the marketing copy to go with them. It may seem to be a stretch to get there from designing motion graphics, but, if you’re in the employ of an agency, it’s actually a straight line up the corporate ladder. You probably won’t be doing much design work in the role (except as, perhaps, the person who sketches out a vague idea that’s then put into production), but the nature of creative roles is that they become less hands-on creative the more managerial or supervisory they become.

How to Decide Which Career is Right for You

With training in motion graphics, you can choose between two primary career foci: do you want to continue designing and animating graphic devices, or do you want to move into the technologically related (but otherwise quite different) world of character animation and, by extension, into the world of film production. That needn’t mean feature films, as commercials include their fair share of character animation: think of all those mascots for kids’ sugary cereals, including such luminaries as Cap’n Crunch and Tony the Tiger. Commercial character animation can be an end in itself, or you can use it as a means of jumping into film production. You’re probably set on a career in motion graphics at this point, which can be extremely rewarding, or you may just get tired of animating graphic devices, letters, and background effects and want to animate something different. And, of course, never discount the possibility that opportunity may lead you someplace thoroughly unexpected.

If you do ultimately decide that you’re more interested in character animation than in animated graphics, don’t forget that, to get there, you’ll need to know the old-fashioned way of drawing figures with traditional media, since you still need to be able to draw to create animation using the computer. After Effects will nonetheless serve you well in the character animation business, although you’ll eventually learn to use additional animation software such as Blender or Autodesk Maya.

Basically, if your interest lies in creating narratives rather than moving objects, you’re probably going to want to gravitate toward an animation job rather than a motion graphics design one. Or there may suddenly be an opening for a character animator, and someone ropes you into it because you know the necessary software. Predicting where your career is going to lead you is an almost impossible task, as serendipity, opportunity, and pure dumb luck all play a role in where you end up from where you started. 

Learn the Skills to Become a Motion Graphics Designer at Noble Desktop

If you’ve decided that you want to make a career designing motion graphics, you’re going to need training, most particularly in the program that’s going to sit at the heart of your professional labors, Adobe After Effects. Noble Desktop, a well-known design and IT school based in New York City, can help you to become a motion graphics designer without a degree. Noble can teach you what you need to know with its Motion Graphics Certificate program, which includes instruction in After Effects, its sister video editing program Premiere Pro, and the 3D modeling program Cinema 4D. You’ll also have ample time and support to devote to the development of your professional portfolio. There is an even more thorough option, the Video Editing and Motion Graphics Certificate program, which includes everything in the Motion Graphics Certificate program, but is augmented by classroom modules in Adobe Audition, Adobe Photoshop, and state-of-the-art instruction in AI for Video & Motion Graphics. (The AI class is available separately, too.)

Both certificate programs include a number of 1-to-1 sessions with an experienced mentor who can assist you with everything from classroom matters to laying down a battle plan for the job market. You’ll also get a free retake option, be able to consult recordings of every classroom session, and receive fully live and fully hands-on instruction that will have you learning by doing rather than just sitting there like a lump trying to make sense out of video tutorials. You’ll be the recipient of Noble Desktop’s proprietary classroom materials and workbooks, which will be yours to keep for future reference. You’ll also earn a New York State-licensed certificate for your labors at the end of the course, which you can exhibit on your all-important LinkedIn profile.