Motion Graphics Designer Requirements

Although different motion graphics design jobs will always have different requirements, there are some hard-and-fast requirements that apply across the board. Potential employers have expectations in terms of education, experience, and the contents of the job-search materials that everyone must have in order to be considered for a role in the field. If you don’t have these things in order, you probably won’t be able to make much of a case for yourself as a Motion Graphics Designer.

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.

Education

The basic educational requirement for a Motion Graphics Designer is a bachelor’s degree, generally in either computer graphics or art. Four years is the time between Olympiads or presidential elections, and it’s a long time, especially for young people. Your time spent in college should equip you with a wide spectrum of knowledge in more than just your area of specialization, but four years will also give you plenty of time to hone your computer graphics skills. That doesn't alter the reality that getting a four-year degree is definitely a leisurely way to make your entrée into the field of motion design.

A less leisurely approach would be to enroll in a certificate program that will concentrate on exactly the skills you’ll need to break into the motion graphics business. You won’t get the same kind of education you’d get if you were in a four-year degree program, but you will learn the baseline skills all Motion Graphics Designers must have. A large part of your energies will be expended learning the sine qua non of motion graphics programming, Adobe After Effects. You’ll learn other things, as well, but you won’t have to worry about writing five-page papers on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

Both routes have much to recommend them. If you can afford a four-year education without saddling yourself with debt for the rest of your life, there are ample good reasons for going to college. On the other hand, if college isn’t readily feasible (or the debt you’ll incur will put both a millstone and an albatross around your neck until your last day on Earth), the non-degree certificate program at a good professional school will make a great deal more sense. Time is also a factor: if you have four years which you can’t put to better use, again, college makes sense. If you’re in a hurry to join the workforce because you need money to indulge caprices such as food, clothing, and a roof over your head, on the other hand, college may not be for you.

In any event, you will need to have some kind of formal education in motion graphics if you’re to find a job in the field. Teaching yourself to use After Effects is very nice, but, without a diploma or a certificate to back up your claims of knowledge, your resume is not going to make it past the initial step in the application tracking system (ATS) that governs just about every HR department in the country.

Experience

Maybe even more than the right education, experience is what’s going to land you the job you want. This poses an admittedly impossible conundrum: how can you get experience if you can’t get hired, and how can you get hired if you don’t have any experience? It’s admittedly a very annoying situation in which to find yourself, but anyone starting out has to resolve it if they’re to end up employed.

A good solution to the riddle is to gain experience by volunteering or taking on an unpaid internship. If you’re good at hustling, you can also try to get some experience by asking everyone you encounter whether they need a motion graphic. You can even barter your services to, say, your local pizzeria: you’ll do a graphic for them, they’ll give you free pizza, and you get to put something onto your resume and into both your portfolio and your stomach.

In any event, you’re going to require up to two years to build up enough experience to be considered seriously for what ironically are called entry-level positions. To move along to roles with more responsibility and some supervisory duties, somewhere from five to eight years’ experience working in the field is going to be necessary, along with the advanced technical skills to match. Jobs with the word director in their titles require even more experience working at lower levels: you’ll probably need ten years of animation experience before you can be considered for an art director or creative director role.

Skills

Motion designers are expected to possess a basic repertory of skills, without which you simply can’t perform the tasks that go with the field. At the top of the list is the program that is a sine qua non for the creation of motion graphics: Adobe After Effects. Adobe designed it so that it would slip effortlessly into other programs in the Adobe Creative Cloud, especially Illustrator (for the creation of logos and static vector graphics), Photoshop (for the editing of still images before they’re brought to life using After Effects) and Premiere Pro (to edit the film you’ve helped create with your motion graphics.) Although it’s not an Adobe program (it’s manufactured by the German firm Maxon Computer GmbH), Cinema 4D is also important to know to get the most out of After Effects: the full version of the program is a 3D modeling, animation and rendering program that can have you working in the cutting-edge world of 3D animation.

Not everyone is completely enamored of the Adobe programs. There is a healthy selection of alternatives on the market, including Blender, Mocha Pro and DaVinci Resolve. Other entrants include Cavalry and ZBrush. And, if you want to work on video games, you’ll need to know some video game engine software, such as Unreal Engine, the game engine best suited for the creation of motion graphics.

In addition to these absolutely essential software skills, motion graphics designers should also be able to use traditional artist’s media. You may well have to sketch something on the fly to show to a client or otherwise work with pencil, paper, and the other tools graphic designers use, even as so much design work has gone digital. You’ll also probably be a better motion graphics designer if you learn to draw first, since drawing skills are transferable to digital design, and the reverse isn’t true. It’s a bit like driving a car: if you learn to drive on an automatic transmission, you’ll never be able to drive a stick shift.

Portfolio

As you look for work in the motion graphics field—and not for just your first job—you’re going to need a portfolio to show potential employers what you can do. Whereas graphic designers used to have cumbersome portfolios of work they would carry to interviews in those big cases with the zipper that goes all around, you’ll have a lot less to carry in today’s job market, where your portfolio is digital and posted online for all to see.

Although radically different from the portfolios of yore, the digital portfolio of your computer designs has to fulfill all the same functions that a tangible portfolio did. It shows what you are able to do with the skills you say you have. That will, of course, make it into a measuring stick for those technical abilities, but it will also show a great deal more to the people who look at it. By showing off polished projects of your own devising, it’s your one chance to show what kind of an artist you are. The rest of the job-search process is unavoidably technical (no one’s ever come up with an artistic interview to set against the technical ones), so your portfolio will show off your artistic tastes and imagination as well as your technical abilities. The importance of a portfolio to your job search cannot be underestimated: it’s your only chance to hook a hiring director.

Resume & LinkedIn Profile

In addition to a portfolio, which is specific to people seeking creative jobs, you’re going to need a resume and a LinkedIn profile, just like any other white-collar job seeker. Together with a cover letter that can be tailored exactly to the job requirements as published on sites like Indeed, these constitute the most important part of your job-search materials.

A resume is a rigorously formatted document that lists your most recent job experience, your repertoire of skills, and your education. There are a few different layouts for a resume, but, even as an artist in search of a creative job, you shouldn’t go too far in an attempt to stand out visually. Your resume is going to go through an application tracking system (ATS), which will ruthlessly separate what it perceives as the grain from the chaff, and which needs to be able to read your list of accomplishments

The established custom is that a resume shouldn’t run longer than a single page, although recent trends seem to be moving in favor of a two-page resume, which does allow more room for your work experience. For someone starting out, you may not have two pages of information to put on your resume, which is perfectly fine. Regardless of whether you go for one or two pages, you should still strive for concision: a good resume is a minimalist depiction of your career thus far.

Whereas resumes were once written with human beings in mind, now you’re writing to impress bots, since, if you don’t impress them, your resume is never going to get viewed by a human, who, if you're lucky, will accord it seven seconds of attention. Like your cover letter, you’re going to need to tailor your resume anew each time you apply for a job so that the bots can find the keywords they expect to find. Gertrude Stein once said that you write for yourself and strangers. At this point in the 21st century, those strangers are heartless algorithms.

Your LinkedIn profile can be longer than your resume, and you can include your entire employment history, rather than just your most recent jobs. This is useful if you have some relevant experience in your deep, dark past. LinkedIn allows you room for elaboration on what you’ve done, and even includes an About section that gives you room to publish a personal statement. You’ll also append a photograph to your profile. (There are some pretty tiresome constraints as to what makes a “professional” photo for these purposes; suffice it to say that any element of humor or personality must be purged from the picture.) In addition, LinkedIn gives you the chance to post about your life, career or current events, just like on any other social medium. If you choose to use LinkedIn that way, you’re going to want to keep these posts buttoned down, professional and regular. LinkedIn also gives you the possibility of forging a network of contacts, contacts of contacts and contacts of contacts of contacts, which some have found useful in obtaining employment. Both recruiters and potential employers keep an eye on LinkedIn, thus it can prove helpful to you as you seek employment.

References

Resumes used to end with a long-established bromide: references available on request. Some resumes today continue to include the line, although, as no one ever put references unavailable on a resume, its presence is assumed. These are professional references, and you are going to want to have three ready to go in the event that anyone asks for them. Good professional references include people who have supervised you, people who work in motion graphics who have gotten to know your work, and, possibly, colleagues who can attest to your good work habits. They have to be people who can speak at some length and positively about your work ethic. Finding three such people may seem impossible, especially if you have very little work experience, and, thus, people who can talk about how you work. If you’re just starting out, you can squeeze in a teacher if need be, but this is not the place for personal references from friends or family.

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.