Motion design glossary

Kinetic typography is the expressive animation of text itself — words and glyphs that move, scale, shear, or morph in rhythm with narrative meaning rather than merely labelling a shot.

A logo sting is a brief 1- to 3-second animated sequence that reveals a brand's emblem or wordmark, serving as a signature intro or closing seal.

A lower third is a graphic overlay positioned in the lower portion of the screen that identifies a speaker, location, or subject without obstructing key facial features.

A ticker or marquee is a continuous, horizontally or perspective-scrolling strip of textual data, stock metrics, or headlines designed to convey steady information flow.

A title card is a full-frame graphic presentation of text and identity, used to establish narrative premises, demarcate chapters, or deliver memorable closing statements.

Word-level captions are subtitles timed to individual words rather than full phrases, where each word dynamically scales, highlights, or enters at the exact millisecond it is spoken.

Annotations and callouts are motivated graphic markers — hand-drawn arrows, highlight rings, speech bubbles, and drawn underlines — that direct visual focus to a specific element.

Animated backgrounds are ambient, looping visual surfaces — fluid mesh gradients, aurora fields, and responsive grids — that provide spatial depth behind foreground content.

Camera movement applies the spatial language of cinematography — push-ins, pull-backs, orbit rotations, and rack focus — to 2D graphic canvases that possess no physical lens.

Motion effects and VFX are physical, optical, or particle treatments — light sweeps, glass refraction, liquid surfaces, and explosions — that enhance realism or visual impact.

A scene filter is an overarching post-processing treatment — such as CRT scanlines, VHS tracking errors, halftone stippling, or lens aberration — applied across a completed composition.

A video transition is the visual join between two adjacent shots — a cut, wipe, morph, whip-pan, or shader distortion that carries the viewer across a temporal or spatial boundary.

Animated icons are vector symbols — checkmarks, shields, lightning bolts, and settings gears — that draw on, morph between states, or perform looped actions to reinforce messaging.

Galleries and carousels are multi-item motion structures — Cover Flow decks, 3D tunnel reels, and scrolling card feeds — that display portfolios, product catalogs, and collections.

Product demos and device scenes present digital software interfaces inside simulated smartphone, tablet, or desktop frames with realistic camera staging and cursor interactions.

Scenes and layouts are structural composition systems — split screens, radial stages, side-by-side comparisons, and responsive frames — that organize multi-element narratives.

Social overlays are authentic recreations of platform-specific interface cards — X posts, Reddit threads, TikTok follows, and push notifications — designed to layer over footage as social proof.

UI motion is the animation of user interface elements — buttons, toggles, sheets, tabs, and modals — demonstrating cause and effect and operational feedback inside software.

Data storytelling is the animated revelation of charts, metric count-ups, and graphs in sequential narrative order, guiding the viewer from premise to statistical conclusion.

Code animation is the presentation of programming code and CLI terminals on screen — typing simulations, syntax highlighting, diff additions/deletions, and command executions.

Animated diagrams are structural process visualizations — flowcharts, architecture pipelines, decision trees, and connected node graphs — that illuminate systemic relationships.

Map animation is the dynamic visualization of geographic data — choropleth color fills, flight route arcs, territory expansions, and regional pins across vector world and regional maps.

Sound effects and foley are acoustic accents — whooshes, clicks, impacts, risers, and ambient drones — that make visual motion feel physical and tactile.

Aspect ratio is the proportional relationship between a video frame's width and height (16:9 for landscape, 9:16 for vertical reels, 1:1 for square feeds), defining compositional margins and UI safe zones.

B-roll is supplementary footage, device mockups, or motion diagrams cut over primary footage to illustrate the speaker's words and seamlessly conceal edit seams.

Easing is the rate at which an animated value changes over time — the mathematical curve defining whether motion accelerates, decelerates, or maintains mechanical constant velocity.

Frame rate is the frequency at which consecutive images appear on screen (e.g. 30fps, 60fps, 24fps); timebase determinism is the guarantee that frame N represents the exact same temporal state every render.

A keyframe marks a specific property value at a designated point in time, allowing software to calculate all intermediate states (in-betweens) through deterministic mathematical interpolation.

Masking is the technique of using an outline, shape, or luminance texture (matte) to restrict the visible region of an underlying layer, creating reveals, wipes, and cutouts.

A match cut is an edit between two shots that share a common shape, color, or trajectory, creating instantaneous conceptual continuity across a dramatic shift in subject or setting.

Motion blur is the visual streaking of rapidly moving objects along their trajectory, caused by the integration of light during the camera's shutter interval.

Parallax is the visual phenomenon where objects closer to the camera appear to move faster across the field of view than distant objects, creating an illusion of true 3D spatial depth.

Programmatic video is video authored as software code — using React, TypeScript, and deterministic time functions — so each frame is produced by code and can be rendered at scale with dynamic data.

A shader is a program running directly on the GPU that calculates color for millions of pixels in parallel every frame, enabling procedural noise, caustics, and organic distortions.

Spring physics is a physical simulation model based on Hooke's Law that computes motion from mass, tension (stiffness), and friction (damping), producing organic overshoot and settlement.

Staggering is the deliberate time offset applied between multiple related elements in a group, so they enter sequentially in cascade rather than appearing simultaneously.

Timing is the number of frames an action takes; spacing is the variation in position between successive frames; rhythm is the overarching cadence governing the pace of cuts and arrivals.