Well thought out and choreographed movement can create an organic connection between the work and the viewer through the use of time, interaction, elasticity and transitional elements that flow from one idea to another.
Movement can be forced and it can be natural. To a designer, forced movement is the equivalent to a cluttered design and competing ideas. To a musician, forced movement is an extra beat in the time signature. It’s horrible and inherently noticeable. In the end, it just doesn’t feel right…
People that get to know me are always interested in my dance career – my previous life as I refer to it. I guess it is seen as an unexpected element and one that has some exciting twists and turns that ends up with meeting my wife.
Through that life, I fell in love with movement and how it conveys so many emotions through subtleties. Over time, I have realized the inspiring role it plays in creating the work that we do at our company.
Now that we are five years old (as a company), we have some incredibly talented animators that bring intangible ideas to life through the use of spot on, gorgeous, chill bumping movement that just feels like perfection. With animation, it’s all about movement and it is really easy to sense if it feels wrong and incredibly challenging to get it right. Ask them!
Where movement is overlooked in our industry is through the web. When working with large lifestyle brands that are more interested in the experience they give to viewers vs. the product or story they are trying to sell, movement is critical and at the forefront of our thought processes. However, it is the middle tier companies where movement can take a backseat in the execution of the work.
I submit that should no longer be the case.
With the use of CSS3 transitions, JS and graceful fallbacks, the creation of good movement should be at the core of what we create. Through technology, the lines between AE, C4D and CSS key frames continue to get blurred on a daily basis and we should make use of this every step of the way. Our team is increasingly aware of what the experience is like when the page loads – does it all plop on there at once or is there a choreographed experience to showing the viewer what they are allowed to see and when? Are there connections between pages or sections that help the viewer funnel through the site (or experience) in the way we designed? Are we really putting in the detail elements to create an experience? These are the hard questions we ask ourselves as designers and creators.
No more are the days of a static experience on the web. Today is about engagement, interaction and yes, conversions.
Ask yourself, are you controlling the experience in your marketing efforts – I mean really controlling the experience?