Inspirational motion graphic designs

Here are some Inspirational motion graphic designs I include in my seminars on “Typography and Dynamic Text animation”. These are inspirational examples of opening title sequences that I have been inspired by throughout the years.

Big thanks especially to the “Art of the Title” website for providing such lovely, high-quality clips for us all to enjoy. They also have some great articles on the inspiration and processes used to create some of these stunning pieces of work. Enjoy!

Anemic Cinema – Marcel Duchamp & Man Ray

Saul Bass:

Man with the Golden Arm

Anatomy of a Murder

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

Ocean’s Eleven

The Facts of Life

Pablo Ferro:

Dr. Strangelove

Midnight Cowboy

The Thomas Crown Affair

Kuntzel and Deygas – Catch me if you Can

De Patie – Freleng – The Pink Panther

Kurtz & Friends – The Pink Panther

Arcady & Maurice Binder – Barbarella

Maurice Binder – Dr. No

Daniel Kleinman – Casino Royale

Saul Bass – North by Northwest

David Fincher – Panic Room

Kyle Cooper – Seven

Danny Yount:

Six Feet Under

Iron Man

Sherlock Holmes

Eric Anderson – Dexter

Matt Mulder & Rama Allen – True Blood

Jamie Caliri – Lemony Snickett

Karin Fong & Steve Fuller – the Mummy Tomb of the Dragon Emporer

Jorge Calvo – Buried

Moises Arancibia – Elektra Luxx      

Creative Graphic Design: Essential Typography

Creative Graphic Design: Essential Typography

My new workshop, Creative Graphic Design: Essential Typography is due to be released next week, just in time for the festive season! The folks at video2brain have kindly allowed me to give my readers a sneak preview and access to one of the movies from this workshop so here it is.

Master the Art of Arranging Text

Typography, the art of arranging text, has a long and storied history. In this one-of-a-kind workshop, art director, illustrator, and motion graphic designer Angie Taylor introduces you to the essential principles of typography. After exploring the terminology, history, and anatomy of traditional and computer-based fonts, she brings you all the way up to the present day by looking at how text is formatted in today’s creative applications. You’ll also learn specific software techniques for creating your own lettering from hand-drawn text, animating text on a path, using operators and effects to customize existing fonts, working with 3D text, and more.
Something’s happening in Europe!

Something’s happening in Europe!

Me with Gerhard & some of the team at video2brain

I’m very excited, something’s happening in Europe that’s going to be fantastic for all of us – I think you’re going to love it! First of all, let me set the scene for why I’m telling you this.

Once in a while, if you’re lucky, you end up working with a bunch of really special people – I’m so lucky it’s happened to me. I create video training workshops with the fantastic team at video2brain which is led by one of the nicest men I have I ever met, Gerhard Koren.

Gerhard and I used to be demo artists for Adobe, traveling to trade shows and events, speaking about how we used Adobe software in our work. We clicked right away, Gerhard was so knowledgeable and talented, and as with most truly gifted people – humble and genuine with it. He always took time to help people to really understand the software and went out of his way to be friendly and kind.

Gerhard set up video2brain in 2002 and it quickly became established as Europe’s premiere go to place for video training. They gained a reputation for quality and innovation that has never been matched.

In 2009 they started creating English Language titles and were joined by Dan Brodnitz who came in to head up the amazing English language team. Dan has an extensive experience in the publishing industry having worked at Lynda.com, O’Reilly and IDG. As well as bringing his publishing expertise to the table, he also brings a passion for creativity, ideas and people. Like Gerhard, he’s what we call in the UK “a top bloke”. Friendly, full of ideas and he cares about quality and integrity.

I’ve worked with video2brain since 2009 when I created my first After Effects Learn by Video product with Adobe’s Todd Kopriva. Since then I’ve created lots more titles and made many more friends at video2brain who I’d love to mention by name but are too numerous to list (you know who you are and how much I love working with you!) We have gradually built a fantastic team of English language trainers who you can find out more about here.

2011 marks another great landmark for video2brain which will be announced this week. I wish I could tell you now but my lips are sealed. All I can say is please keep an eye on the countdown on our video2brain website. And if you want to get an idea about the kind of video training we offer, take a look at some of the 600 plus free tutorials we offer online as a taster of what’s to come.

Typography Video Training

Typography Video Training

Creative Graphic Design: Essential Typography

– a typography video-training workshop on the principles of designing text.

Design Essentials for the Motion Media ArtistI’ve just finished recording my latest workshop with the fantastic team at video2brain. It’s a workshop with a difference.

If you want the salient points delivered to you quickly so you can get on with your work, this product is perfect for you. It’s a series of short videos that form an educational and enjoyable workshop that you can sit back and enjoy – imbibing my knowledge as you go!

It’s based upon the Typography chapter from my book, Design Essentials for the Motion Media Artist. Not everyone likes to read books or needs the level of detail covered in Design Essentials so this provides an alternative.

It provides a quick-reference guide in the format of a video presentation. All the essential key principles of Typography that every designer needs are covered. And it won’t bog you down with too much detail (that’s what the book is for right?) it’s fast-paced and illustrated throughout with helpful animated diagrams and examples of work.

Learn about the history and anatomy of type as well as the terminology used to describe the components of text. Discover the difference between typefaces and fonts, glyphs and characters, serifs and sans serifs, kerning and tracking, leading and baseline shift. Find out when and why you would use specific fonts based on  aesthetics, cultural associations and characteristics.

The anatomy of type

This workshop expands on the content of the book with additional software exercises to improve your typographic software skills. You’ll learn how to apply the principles of typography in practical ways to graphic design projects. Software exercises will show you how Adobe’s Character and Paragraph panels can help make the most of your text, creating unique and exciting effects.

I’ll also teach you lots of neat tricks like animating text along paths in After Effects and making text write on the screen. In Illustrator we’ll use operators to customize lettering, giving it a hand drawn look,. We’ll create 3D Text in Photoshop and add Layer Styles to brighten up our graphic designs. In InDesign you’ll make the most of its powerful Open Type features such as ligatures, glyphs and other special characters.

 

 

With this comprehensive typography video training workshop you can simply sit back and watch as I present the principles for you. If you feel like following along, all the exercise files are provided. The videos are short and easily digested and you won’t get bogged down with technical jargon as I explain difficult concepts using easy-to-understand, real-world terminology.

If you’d like to be notifies when this title becomes available please click on this link.