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Typography In Motion

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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.

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.

Cuareto in Typography In Motion

Cuareto2 in Typography In Motion

Cuarteto3 in Typography In Motion

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.

Gother in Typography In Motion

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.

Lions1 in Typography In Motion

Pulp Fiction in Typography
What Does Mr. Wallace Look Like?

Pulp1 in Typography In Motion

Pulp2 in Typography In Motion

Typographics
Typography is what language looks like. A brief movie about typography with interacting typographic elements.

Typography1 in Typography In Motion

Typography2 in Typography In Motion

Are You Gonna Be My Girl?

Girl in Typography In Motion

Duck and Cover
Typography assignment using audio from an old public service announcement called “Duck and Cover” from the 50s.

Duck1 in Typography In Motion

Duck2 in Typography In Motion

Further Resources

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.

Remind-me-1 in Typography In Motion

Vitaly Friedman, editor-in-chief of Smashing Magazine (www.smashingmagazine.com), an online magazine dedicated to designers and developers.

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  1. 1
    Robin
    November 19th, 2007 4:46 pm

    It’s shame that some of these are just YouTube videos – I’d love to see higher quality versions, particularly of the ‘typographics’ clip

  2. 2
    Richard Francis Kay
    November 19th, 2007 4:58 pm

    Great post! They look absolutely fabulous :-) Thanks for putting such an effort in this Smashing resources/quality website!

  3. 3
    Eli
    November 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 :)

  4. 4
    JoK
    November 19th, 2007 5:11 pm

    What a perfect begin for this week !

    Thanks a lot smashing yeah.

    Some of this videos are absolutely cultish.

  5. 5
    David Airey
    November 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.

  6. 6
    uli
    November 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 :(

  7. 7
    ~~~d(o.o)b~~~
    November 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~~~

  8. 8
    Aaron
    November 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:

    Prince’s video on Dailymotion

  9. 9
    Franko
    November 19th, 2007 9:15 pm

    That’s quite nice also: Wedding Crashers: The Perfect Girl

  10. 10
    Jonny Haynes
    November 19th, 2007 9:30 pm

    really smashing work ;-) seriously, keep it up!

  11. 11
    Wendy
    November 19th, 2007 9:40 pm

    would love to see the font download references from those movies mentioned

  12. 12
    cemiotika
    November 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)

  13. 13
    joseph
    November 19th, 2007 10:07 pm

    This is an excellent article. Loved this post…So many talented pieces in this.

  14. 14
    Anthony
    November 19th, 2007 10:16 pm

    Royksopp is awesome. This has been one of the better Inspiration monday posts. Keep it up Smashing!

  15. 15
    Michael Peters
    November 19th, 2007 10:23 pm

    This is fucking incredible post! The best Monday Inspiration so far!

  16. 16
    Chris
    November 19th, 2007 11:09 pm

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIDdx7NPJgo

  17. 17
    ~~~d(o.o)b~~~
    November 20th, 2007 12:13 am

    @Stephane:
    Nice track and a cool clip 2… ;-)

    hAVE pHUN
    ~~~d(o.o)b~~~

  18. 18
    Ryan Uhrich
    November 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:

    http://wearenormal.ca/

    cheers :D

    Ryan

  19. 19
    tite
    November 20th, 2007 12:38 am

    Yeaaaaah !!!
    AweSomEEEEE MONDAY

    Thanks

  20. 20
    Jonic
    November 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”:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozcFzxHnPhE

  21. 21
    CrazyLeaf
    November 20th, 2007 1:47 am

    Love the Pulp Fiction one. Really interesting.

  22. 22
    JC
    November 20th, 2007 2:03 am

    More here: http://deafmusician.com/creative-motion-typography/

  23. 23
    ezKiel
    November 20th, 2007 3:35 am

    You have to include this one

  24. 24
    Wes O'Haire
    November 20th, 2007 3:36 am

    Hey guys check out this one out too…

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HSmnIMvgyE

  25. 25
    Ben
    November 20th, 2007 5:04 am

    Nice article as always. I love typography, particularly in movie credits.

  26. 26
    Matty
    November 20th, 2007 9:49 am

    Smashing post! This was very inspiring for me, thanks a lot Smashing Magazine. :)

  27. 27
    Mig Reyes
    November 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!

    http://www.vimeo.com/liqueoum

  28. 28
    thejanuaryfall
    November 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 …

  29. 29
    Mig Reyes
    November 20th, 2007 1:19 pm

    I did it in collaboration with Matt Born, he never gets enough credit haha. Thanks!

  30. 30
    Carola
    November 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?)

  31. 31
    torkla
    November 20th, 2007 10:22 pm

    @Carola
    Productora: Milagrito Films
    Director: Charly Gutierrez
    :)

  32. 32
    Bruno
    November 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!

  33. 33
    stefano picco
    November 21st, 2007 1:28 am

    simply call it motion-design

  34. 34
    Raf
    November 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.

  35. 35
    TheUprock!.com
    November 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 —

    http://www.mk12.com/video-popup.html?video=/v5_quicktime/2003/brazil.mov&title=BRAZIL%20INSPIRED%3A%20MACHO%20BOX&date=&info=2003&type=inhouse

  36. 36
    Dom Gregori
    November 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

  37. 37
    madriaza
    November 24th, 2007 4:49 am

    we publish this post about 5 months ago. see Motion Typographics on Digilicious.cl

  38. 38
    Stefan
    November 25th, 2007 7:50 am

    Mhhh, great but Colurzblog published some movie based typographie videos a few days earlier. Also great!

  39. 39
    paqpaq
    November 25th, 2007 8:12 am

    Also a nice Type video

  40. 40
    cb
    November 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…

  41. 41
    NR
    November 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!!

  42. 42
    fayyaz B.
    December 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. 43
    nicole
    March 4th, 2008 8:56 am

    Let the Drummer Kick

    is also another fun typography piece.

  44. 44
    chestah
    April 7th, 2008 5:46 am

    pulp fiction in typography is smashing!

  45. 45
    Reginald
    May 13th, 2008 1:01 pm

    Typography in motion…everything is always that much more impressive with a little animation.

  46. 46
    Mh CHOG
    June 21st, 2008 2:17 pm

    Where can I find tutorials to do these motion effect in Flash our After Effects?

  47. 47
    muthu
    June 28th, 2008 1:46 am

    UR sufflies a lot of tips to artist
    thankssssssssssssssss

  48. 48
    rivetindia
    September 22nd, 2008 12:12 am

    Manufacturer and exporter Rivet, Rivet Machine, Rivet Nut Tool, Semi Tubular Rivet, Metal Rivet, Auto motive, auto part, spare part, truck part, Screw Rivet, Fasteners.We are Trader Exporter Rivet, Maker Rivet.

  49. 49
    X7007
    September 30th, 2008 12:47 pm

    Man, thats nice examples. My favorite is “long brown hair”

    Greets X7007.COM

  50. 50
    pieter heyman
    October 14th, 2008 5:40 am

    I created one to
    inspired by the song and the other motion graphic “jet – are you gonna be my girl”

    this is my version

  51. 51
    Matthew Born
    November 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!

    I Before E Except After C

  52. 52
    Rickard Bengtsson
    May 16th, 2009 11:55 am

    Here’s a typography music video I made

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7C5H8HPQjk

  53. 53
    passionmotion
    May 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!

  54. 54
    passionmotion
    May 19th, 2009 12:20 pm

    soo fresh!

  55. 55
    Robert H
    June 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.

  56. 56
    zeebi
    August 19th, 2009 12:58 am

    very nice collection specially the 3rd one. I personally like some more here

  1. 00

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