What's the difference between motion design and animation?

FAQs

What's the Difference between Motion Design & Animation?

by Jordan

Creative Director

Motion design (also called motion graphics) is the practice of taking graphics and making them move — think animated logos, letters that move or stylish transitions.

Animation is broader, but most people think of character-led or illustrated storytelling, like a Pixar film. The key difference is intent: motion design is design- and brand-led; animation is usually narrative-led. In reality though, many projects combine elements of both.

Motion design: graphics in motion

Motion design sits right in the middle of graphic design and animation. When a designer takes visual elements — logos, type, shapes — and brings them to life, that's motion design.

You might recognise these examples:

Animated brand logos
Kinetic typography (moving text)
Transitions and UI animations
Data visualisation
Branded social content

The key characteristic of motion design is that it's design-led. The starting point is visual identity, brand language, and aesthetics (not character or story). Such as this piece for Chatloop.

Where the two overlap

The jobs we love the most are where we get to bring both sides of the studio together to combine our Motion and Animation tools together.

the practical differences between the two (inputs, production and outputs)
where an overlap might happen and what it could look like

Animation: movement with a story

Animation relates to all things that move, but most people think of character and illustrated projects when you mention animation – the sort of thing you’d see in a Pixar film.

The key characteristic here is that animation tends to be narrative-led. It exists to tell a story, convey emotion, or bring a character to life.

Being an Animation & Motion Design studio, we often move between the two, depending on the brief. The Sweet Freedom Commercial we worked on, whilst not a long piece, definitely used the charm and nature of Animation to convey an emotion.