The 5-Step Blueprint Pro Motion Designers Use on Every Project

Sometimes motion graphics may look relatively easy, but there are so many steps along the way to complete any project. Let’s dive into the process from client brief to final deliverable. 

Joey is going to walk you through all of the steps involved in the creation of a piece of motion design, specifically this one: 

This animation originally played before all of the free tutorials we put out. It may look pretty simple, but even short little bits of mograph like this can take a ton of work.

1. The Brief

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Every project starts with a brief. Sometimes that brief comes from a client and gives you some pretty specific direction. But in this case, the client is me. Now, you might think that would make things easier, but in reality, doing projects with no clear guidelines or direction can be very tricky.

So I made up a brief: Create a 10 to 15-second branded animation that reveals the School of Motion logo while hinting at the type of things we teach. 

Animating on a logo is one of the most common tasks a motion designer will have to tackle, and there are a million ways to do it. So to narrow down the number of options from, say, infinity to something more manageable, it helps to develop a concept.

2. The Concept

The concept is the driving force behind every good mograph piece. Sometimes concepts are very concrete, but sometimes you just want to hint at things being a little subtle. I did an exercise called mind-mapping to come up with some options for the concept. I wrote down all kinds of words, phrases and ideas that relate to what we do at School of Motion.

Each idea leads to other ideas, and you can keep digging until you find something that sets off a light bulb in your brain. I eventually landed on this idea here Show, Teach Reinforce. 

This is the philosophy behind all of the teaching that we do here at School of Motion. We show you something cool to pique your interest. Then we explode that thing open and show you how it works. And then we reinforce that knowledge so it sticks in your brain. 

So using design as sort of a visual language, I translated that basic concept into a visual idea. I usually work out rough ideas like this the old-fashioned way with a pencil and paper. And here's what I came up with. I'll show something concrete, a ball bounce, all then explode - literally. The idea of the ball bounce into a bunch of cool-looking visual metaphors, and then everything will combine back together as our logo. But what exactly will that look like?