What Is Kinetic Typography?

Shea — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 17:51:50 +0000

Edit: Please excuse my poor writing skills – I am a little under the weather today.

What is Kinetic Typography? “Kinetic Typography refers to the art and technique of expression with animated text. Similar to the study of traditional typography of designing static typographic forms, Kinetic Typography focuses on understanding the effect time has on the expression of text. Kinetic Typography has demonstrated the ability to add significant emotive content and appeal to expressive text, allowing some of the qualities normally found in film and the spoken word to be added to static text.” When news broke that drummer Travis Barker (Blink 182) was injured in a plane wreck (read), a comment was made about some video a fan had created weeks before. Shown below, the video is just an entertaining and well-done animation showing off some of the ingenious creativity artists can present using with something as basic as text.

While scouring the internet for some closely related videos I found this short of a Streetlight Manifesto tune. The animation is fantastic and I wish it was the full song – but then again, the music slowly becomes aggravating :/

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Moving on! There are actually a few different ‘types’ of Kinetic Typography. One in its sincerest form is the opening credits for the film Thank You for Smoking! (below) This type doesn’t necessarily involve a lot of animation, but more or less is still considered Kinetic. You will start noticing this form of design in movies as they continue to pick up this trend for it’s eye-catching and simple form.

Another representation of Kinetic Typography in movies is the opening sequence for the more widely known “Catch Me If You Can”. I didn’t have much luck finding a video with higher quality but you’ll get the gist of it.

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Kinetic Typography is an artform. Ending our list of inspiration and fun are these two amazing videos; one explaining text and fonts by the Vancouver Film School, the other just a hilarious skit called “Who’s On First?” by Abbott & Costello.

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Animation Inspiration

Shea — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 16:32:13 +0000

Vimeo.com has recently been added to my list of favorite sites to browse. A video that I really enjoyed hit the digg front page Saturday night and made me look more into the animation side of vimeo. I found a few shorts today, one being a very well done commercial for United Airlines, and thought I should pass them on to you. Here they are in no particular order:

World War – 3D Animation @ University Of Hertfordshire 2008 from Digital Animation Herts Uni UK on Vimeo.

A SHORT LOVE STORY IN STOP MOTION from Carlos Lascano on Vimeo.

Sea Orchestra from Shy the Sun on Vimeo.

Last but not least – a different form of animation we have:

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

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