The point? If motion graphics is
“animation plus graphic design,”
then it’s really about two vast,
foggy but exhilarating fields that
have somehow managed to locate
each other’s reproductive organs
and produce a child. If we unravel
that child’s DNA and decode it,
we get something like, “the communication
of information via the
sequencing of images and text.”
Not bad, actually. But that’s the
barest of definitions for a field that
refuses to be defined. Motion
graphics encompasses a huge
range of disciplines with the
voracity of a starved amoeba. An incomplete laundry list includes
(in addition to graphic design and animation): sound design, visual effects, cinematography, editing,
music composition and even interaction design and installation art.
Viewed one way, motion graphics
is infiltrating existing fields.
Everything that was once static is
now subject to movement—and
thus to motion graphics. A couple
of years ago, the countless posters
that lined Tottenham Court Road
Station’s longest escalator were
replaced by as many LCD displays,
each playing a motion graphicsfueled
video loop. Putting aside
the moral and/or psychological
repercussions of this visual orgy,
motion is undeniably altering the
urban landscape from the inside out.