Is Motion Graphics Design Right For Me?

Although the matter is highly subjective, and there are as many right answers to this question as there are people to ask it, there are nonetheless certain parameters within which any motion graphics designer has to operate. While the field affords considerable creative freedom, you’ll also have to be able to create on demand: you can’t sit around and wait for inspiration as a professional motion designer. This is where craft comes to the rescue of art, but you have to be prepared to face this aspect of creative work. The other big stumbling block that all motion designers have to face is the probability that you’ll be freelancing at some point in your career. If the freedom of freelancing, making your own hours, and (if you’re lucky) choosing your clients is attractive to you, you’ll also have to have the stomach for a career that doesn’t guarantee you a steady paycheck, and that calls for a whole lot more hustle than someone on salary needs to have. 

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.

Why Become a Motion Graphics Designer?

Creativity

There can be no question that the primary characteristic of a Motion Graphics Designer is creativity. If you’re not a creative person, you’re not going to make much of a motion designer, although, if you’re not creative by nature, you’re probably not going to want to be a motion designer in the first place. Creativity in this context means the ability to see things in your mind that aren’t there, and then to make them appear on the computer. You may take that ability for granted, but the reality is that most people don’t have it.

You should have an interest in design as well as in art to succeed in motion graphics, since you may be called upon to design the graphic devices you bring to life as well. If you have an interest in logo design, you should probably learn to use Adobe Illustrator in addition to After Effects. You should also have a feel for what can be called commercial art, since the graphics you animate are almost certainly going to be put to commercial use. A logo, after all, is just a branding device designed to sell more shoes, hats, or golf clubs, as the case may be.

Technology

In addition to artistic talent and the ability to use traditional artists’ media effectively, you’re going to need a strong interest in technology and its capabilities to make it in the motion design field. While there’s a chance you’ll have to sketch out ideas using pencils or even brushes, your real work is going to take place on the computer. This is where the design and technological paths converge, and you need to master twenty-first-century skills to go with the artistic skills you have that have remained pretty much unchanged since Rembrandt’s time. You can’t be a good motion graphics designer if you can’t embrace the technological side of the job.

That means, at the very least, being an expert user of Adobe After Effects, although other Adobe programs such as Illustrator and Premiere can be of use to motion designers as well. Those will account for a sizable portion of the work you’ll do over the course of your career, but there are other programs that you will learn to use in time. That means either on-the-job training or some professional development classes in the likes of Blender and Mocha. There’s a lot of technology involved in being a motion graphics designer, and the better you are at using it, the better you’ll be at your job. You shouldn’t throw away your pencils and brushes (if nothing else, you can indulge in traditional art as a way of unwinding after a day making art on the computer), but you should go into motion graphics design as literate in the software involved as is humanly possible.

Client Service

Every business involves relationships with clients. Unique to the creative professions is, however, the need to share an artistic vision with the client and convince them that your vision is the right one for the task at hand. This, in turn, means that you’re putting the fruits of your own creativity on the line, and you'll need to overcome the natural tendency to take criticism personally. You’ll accordingly need to learn to separate yourself from your artistic output if you’re to succeed.

That’s only one aspect of how to keep a client happy. You’ll also have to learn to understand what they want from not always very clear instructions: there can be clashes when creative people are called upon to communicate with the less creative. And vice versa. You’ll also have to learn to accept constructive (and, inevitably, not too constructive) criticism of your work, and possess the ability to revise your ideas several times over to please people who may not be ideally able to express what they want in terms you (as a creative person) can understand. But, as the money originates with your clients, you’ll have to learn to work with them, and deliver work they like.

Working on Teams

In addition to working with clients, you’re going to have to be able to work as part of a creative team. Until (and if) you go out on your own as a freelancer, you’re most likely going to be one of several people working on a single creative project. You’ll be part of a collaborative environment, which means that you will be a cog in a larger machine. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but, if you’re fresh out of school and have been solely responsible for all the projects in your portfolio, you’ll have to accustom yourself to a different way of working.

Some people thrive on the collaborative energy that comes with working on a team. You may not want to be the captain of your own ship, and would rather collaborate with other creative people who can assess and critique your work and help you develop as a motion designer. There is definitely no better way to learn more about your chosen profession than to work on a team of people with more experience than you.

Freelancing

Some people, on the other hand, champ at the corporate bit and want to have full creative control over their projects, even if it means that those projects are less elaborate than those that a team of motion designers can create. This is the world of the lone wolf freelancer, who works directly with the client without corporate intermediaries. Working this way entails such potentially unfamiliar things as paying estimated tax four times a year, seeking out your own clients, and going through fallow periods in which your income stream dries up for a spell. If some people like working on teams, the statistical reality is that most motion graphics designers prefer to work as freelancers, probably because creativity doesn’t necessarily flourish in collaborative circumstances (consider the old joke that a camel is a horse designed by a committee.)

Freelancing is a great lifestyle for those who possess the risk tolerance for it. Among the many advantages it affords are:

• deciding when and how you work, 
• Having only the client to please, and
• Not having to settle for two weeks’ vacation a year.

But also:

• Forgoing a steady paycheck,
• Being responsible for your own health insurance,
• Keeping a cushion of cash in the bank to tide you over when there’s a shortfall of work,
• Running your own accounting department, and
• Constantly being on the lookout for the next client.

Some people wouldn’t want to work any other way, but, if your risk avoidance exceeds your risk tolerance, it’s not going to be a good fit for you.

Do I Need a Degree to Become a Motion Graphics Designer?

The answer here is not necessarily. Certainly, the most frequently taken path to a career in motion graphics design runs through a bachelor’s degree in computer animation or a related field. That’s what HR officers and their army of merciless bots (applicant tracking systems, or ATSs) expect a priori. On the other hand, four years of college is a long time, and it can take even longer if you need to work while pursuing your degree. College has also become prohibitively expensive, and the expedient of borrowing money to finance an undergraduate education can have severe financial repercussions for the rest of your life. Thus a four-year degree may not be your best option.

You’re not without options. You can choose to attend a school that is designed to provide you with the knowledge you need to launch yourself into a motion graphics career in a whole lot less time than four years. These in-depth programs will teach you to use After Effects to create motion graphics, frequently together with a dip into other Adobe programs such as Illustrator and Premiere Pro. You won’t be an expert user of After Effects after one of these courses, since expertise in using the software generally comes only from using it at work on a daily basis, but these courses, known as certificate programs, are designed to teach you what you need to know to get hired. True, you won’t be receiving the kind of well-rounded education you’re supposed to get from a four-year undergraduate program, but you’ll be ready to join the workforce in a matter of months rather than years. And you won’t have to worry about distribution requirements in the natural sciences, math, and the humanities, which means you’ll be able to become a motion graphics designer without ever having had to write a paper on the Borges essay about the infinite monkey theorem.

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.