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Typography In Motion
In most designs typography is used to present information in a rather static way — after all, it has to be read by users. However, it doesn’t have to be like this. What effects can be achieved if typography is set in motion? What happens if letters are suddenly floating, jumping and dancing around while sentences are actually interacting with the readers?
Where motion is involved, video is necessary. Below we present some excellent examples of typography embedded into movies and videos — be prepared, “dynamic” typography can be breathtaking.
[Offtopic: By the way, did you know that Smashing Magazine has a mobile version? Try it out if you have an iPhone, Blackberry or another capable device.]
Typography In Motion
Cuarteto de Nos
This music video of the Spanish Uruguayan band Cuarteto de Nos is mostly based upon typography. For our purposes it isn’t important what the song is actually about — the brilliant performance of typography makes a lasting impression. The colors are chosen wisely and carefully. The combination of letters, illustration and text effects is simply incredible. A must-see for typography lovers.
Alex Gopher – The Child
A video created by Antoine Bardou-Jacquet for the French DJ Alex Gopher. A world made only with typography. Cult video for fonts lovers and graphic designers.
The Hush Sound – The Lions Roar
So simple, yet so beautiful. Apparently, sometimes you just need to follow your inspiration. The rest isn’t that important.
Pulp Fiction in Typography
What Does Mr. Wallace Look Like?
Typographics
Typography is what language looks like. A brief movie about typography with interacting typographic elements.
Duck and Cover
Typography assignment using audio from an old public service announcement called “Duck and Cover” from the 50s.
Further Resources
- Court.TV
A typographic intro. - Typography In Music Videos
A growing collection of music videos based upon different typography techniques. - Citizen Cope – Let The Drummer Kick
A typographic animation of Citizen Cope’s song “Let the Drummer Kick”.
The Last Click
Royksopp – Remind Me
OK, it’s not about pure typography, but this music video is fascinating. As stated here, you can watch it dozens times and still not catch everything. A day in the life of an average working Jill, broken down into its minutest component parts. The unstated joke: mankind has erected immense, resource-devouring systems of almost incomprehensible complexity just so you can sit in your cubicle.
Vitaly Friedman, editor-in-chief of Smashing Magazine (www.smashingmagazine.com), an online magazine dedicated to designers and developers.
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November 19th, 2007 4:58 pmGreat post! They look absolutely fabulous :-) Thanks for putting such an effort in this Smashing resources/quality website!
- 3November 19th, 2007 5:08 pm
Seen the Pulp Fiction one before, really quite interesting.
Also, as Robin said, it would be good if we could see a better quality version of these, I hate the tiny little videos :)
- 4November 19th, 2007 5:11 pm
What a perfect begin for this week !
Thanks a lot smashing yeah.
Some of this videos are absolutely cultish.
- 5November 19th, 2007 5:24 pm
The Alex Gopher vid is one of my all-time favs. I’d never seen the Royksopp video before, even though I really like that track, so thanks for posting it.
- 6November 19th, 2007 6:16 pm
great post, thanks for that! I hope there will be a chapter 2 with opening titles of movies …
and those youtube-flash-movies suck. I wish quicktime ruled the net :(
- 7November 19th, 2007 7:20 pm
Alex Gopher… I love his music style… and that clip is perfect!…
Jet… I like their song and that video rocks too…
Pulp Fiction… Does he look like a bitch?… BAM, BAM, hrhr…Thanks for that great stuff!… really smashing…
hAVE pHUN
~~~d(o.o)b~~~ - 8November 19th, 2007 8:59 pm
Maybe Prince’s 1987 video clip for Sign ‘O’ The Times was maybe the first commercial use of mainly typography in video clips:
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- 10November 19th, 2007 9:30 pm
really smashing work ;-) seriously, keep it up!
- 11November 19th, 2007 9:40 pm
would love to see the font download references from those movies mentioned
- 12November 19th, 2007 9:59 pm
Hi there!, CUARTETO DE NOS is not a SPANISH band, is a BAND from URUGUAY (south america!),
I’am from Uruguay too!, that’s why i know where is the band from!…
CheerZ! (sorry for my english)
- 13November 19th, 2007 10:07 pm
This is an excellent article. Loved this post…So many talented pieces in this.
- 14November 19th, 2007 10:16 pm
Royksopp is awesome. This has been one of the better Inspiration monday posts. Keep it up Smashing!
- 15November 19th, 2007 10:23 pm
This is fucking incredible post! The best Monday Inspiration so far!
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- 17November 20th, 2007 12:13 am
@Stephane:
Nice track and a cool clip 2… ;-)hAVE pHUN
~~~d(o.o)b~~~ - 18November 20th, 2007 12:19 am
Hi Robin,
Yeah, the Youtube version is really compressed and hard to see. You can view a higher quality version of Typographics at:
cheers :D
Ryan
- 19November 20th, 2007 12:38 am
Yeaaaaah !!!
AweSomEEEEE MONDAYThanks
- 20November 20th, 2007 12:55 am
Here’s another cool typography in motion clip… It’s more about the animation than the typography itself, but it’s worth a peek anyway…
It’s the first 30 seconds of Blackalicious’s “Chemical Calisthenics”:
- 21November 20th, 2007 1:47 am
Love the Pulp Fiction one. Really interesting.
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- 24November 20th, 2007 3:36 am
Hey guys check out this one out too…
- 25November 20th, 2007 5:04 am
Nice article as always. I love typography, particularly in movie credits.
- 26November 20th, 2007 9:49 am
Smashing post! This was very inspiring for me, thanks a lot Smashing Magazine. :)
- 27November 20th, 2007 12:23 pm
Hey, thanks for posting our video! It’s an honor to be among so many other great type-based motion videos. Check out our high-rez version on Vimeo!
- 28November 20th, 2007 12:33 pm
the hush sound one is made by my friend mig reyes, he.s a student at the illinois institute of art … so you should give credit to mig reyes, not the hush sound …
- 29November 20th, 2007 1:19 pm
I did it in collaboration with Matt Born, he never gets enough credit haha. Thanks!
- 30November 20th, 2007 5:04 pm
@cemiotica (or anyone informed)
Do you know who made the Cuarteto de Nos video ?
(translation: sabés de quien es el video del Cuarteto de Nos?) - 31November 20th, 2007 10:22 pm
@Carola
Productora: Milagrito Films
Director: Charly Gutierrez
:) - 32November 21st, 2007 12:29 am
Hi!,very good selection , i am uruguayan , and is good to see a high quality work like the Cuarteto videoclip listed here.
By the way, amazing blog, i have this feed on favorites. Keep Smashing! - 33November 21st, 2007 1:28 am
simply call it motion-design
- 34November 21st, 2007 1:30 am
If you’re going to talk about typography in motion you gotta talk about the masters – mk12. http://www.mk12.com/
Just check out their reel. - 35November 22nd, 2007 1:42 am
A little disappointed when I opened — I’ve seen all these videos before, by simply typing “typography” into YouTube.
I can’t believe you guys didn’t include this video, which pioneered most of the aforementioned clips and their styles —
- 36November 23rd, 2007 5:15 am
Can’t believe no one included this one. http://brian.shaler.name/pages/blog/hey-ya-typography-animation/
Out cast’s hey ya covered by Obadiah Parker (Acoustic) all typography by Brian Shaler.-Dom
- 37November 24th, 2007 4:49 am
we publish this post about 5 months ago. see Motion Typographics on Digilicious.cl
- 38November 25th, 2007 7:50 am
Mhhh, great but Colurzblog published some movie based typographie videos a few days earlier. Also great!
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- 40November 27th, 2007 4:35 am
This is all a rip of Kyle Cooper’s work.
If you don’t know about Kyle Cooper, you probably need to – he’s the Saul Bass of contemporary motion graphics. If you don’t know who Saul Bass is…
- 41November 28th, 2007 4:43 pm
What kind of programs are used for this videos. And are there some tutorials on the web so I can start experimenting with it.
Love the videos!! - 42December 10th, 2007 9:29 pm
Cool stuff… very inspiring!.
I remembered an ad for one of the earliest MAC Ads which had a really cool TYPOGRAPHY animation. It was so smooth and cool like MAC ads are, though I never got hold of that ad or how that was made. - 43
- 44April 7th, 2008 5:46 am
pulp fiction in typography is smashing!
- 45May 13th, 2008 1:01 pm
Typography in motion…everything is always that much more impressive with a little animation.
- 46June 21st, 2008 2:17 pm
Where can I find tutorials to do these motion effect in Flash our After Effects?
- 47June 28th, 2008 1:46 am
UR sufflies a lot of tips to artist
thankssssssssssssssss - 48September 22nd, 2008 12:12 am
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- 49September 30th, 2008 12:47 pm
Man, thats nice examples. My favorite is “long brown hair”
Greets X7007.COM
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- 51November 29th, 2008 5:02 pm
I just happened to walk into the living room while my parents were watching A Boy Named Charlie Brown on ABC Family and was quite astounded. Type-driven motion graphics from 1969!
- 52May 16th, 2009 11:55 am
Here’s a typography music video I made
- 53May 19th, 2009 12:20 pm
ok ok Cuarteto de Nos is really good. but look at this : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u_rbjZhtCI&feature=channel_page : the shiznit!
- 54May 19th, 2009 12:20 pm
soo fresh!
- 55June 15th, 2009 8:44 am
Just an FYI that almost all of the links on YouTube are gone thanks to WMG removing them. you might want to track down some new ones, these were great.
- 56August 19th, 2009 12:58 am
very nice collection specially the 3rd one. I personally like some more here
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It’s shame that some of these are just YouTube videos – I’d love to see higher quality versions, particularly of the ‘typographics’ clip