AMEN & ANONYMOUS: KINETIC & MOTION TYPOGRAPHY

The dictionary definition of kinetic typography is: noun [uncountable/countable] an animation technique involving moving text, usually accompanied by corresponding speech. '… Motion typography (or kinetic typography) refers to the art and technique of expression with animated text.

This pretty much sums it up but an excellent example and Dan Palmer, winner of a Student Design award from Canterbury Christ Church University. This makes excellent use of kinetic text, layout, size, colour, images and animation to communicate the speech on creativity. Bold colourful and creative it really shows off what the technique can achieve



The technique quite often works with speech using type and animations to illustrate what is being said in a complementary, fun and inventive way. It may also be just text but it tries to bring the words to life. The technique can be a little time consuming and you certainly want to have a basic storyboard and idea of how it will work on screen creatively before you get down to the technical aspects of creating it. It is a technique I have used before and created in Adobe After Effects and feel may work well with both the Anonymous piece and Amen Pieces I am developing. I have a little graphic design experience and training and as long as i do not stretch this too far feel that this will serve me well. Below are a collection of kinetic typography work that I feels works well for reference.

The piece below uses Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator speech and makes good use of effects, filters, movement and also imagery and animations to bring this to life. The timing is bang on and it really shows what is possible. It also demonstrates that if the speech is too fast then the typography can be a little overwhelming for the audience so something to watch here.




The video below is a clip from a movie about the snowboarder Travis Rice, Thats It, Thats All. As you can see it demonstrates how moving video and kinetic typography can be used in tandem. Truth be told not a great example but it does give some idea of how (and how not to) use the technique. The typography often obscures the images underneath and could be more sympathetic to them and work in tandem with them as often it is just a heavy handed overlay. Also it suffers on occasions when the visual and typography create overload in the audience and there is far too much to take in. Perhaps highlighting a few key words would be better. They have also avoided images my guess is because there are images underneath but I feel these could have been used and avoided a lot of the words on the screen. In places it works but if I decide to use this technique of typography AND moving image perhaps a clearer screen with room for this to happen, the images and typography working together and greater focus on composition are the lessons to take forward.