ii. Thoughts... / 02. Why Motion?
“Kärt barn har många namn”
—
Swedish proverb
We live in a world overwhelmed by contnet, where words are skimmed, images are scrolled, and attention is measured in fractions of a second. Communicating clearly is hard enough, but communicating memorably? That’s an entirely different story.
To truly move someone, you need more than clarity — you need emotion. Motion design can grab attention, create feeling and tell stories that have real impact, not just for a moment, but over time. In an age of social feeds, fragmented messages and algorithmic editing, a film gives you control. You own the narrative — visually, emotionally, structurally. It doesn’t get cropped, rewritten or taken out of context. It stays whole.
Motion design has many names; animation, moving image, visual storytelling — whatever you choose to call it, moving images are undeniably moving — both in the literal and the figurative sense. Great motion design has the power to amuse and amaze, persuade and engage. It can set a tone, open minds, change minds, transport, help you remember or help you to forget. It’s an immensely powerful tool whichever way you frame it. It can define or re-define brands, create personality and character, tell powerful stories that resonate with emotional depth in ways that no other medium can achieve. It can distill the complex into the concise, cross boarders, cultures and languages to speak in a universal language, one without words in which anything is possible. If a picture paints a thousand words, imagine what twenty five frames a second can do!
But a great story still needs to be well told, and a mediocre story well told, whilst it may look enticing, will always be mediocre. So, one without the other is only half of the equation. Finding this balance and achieving both at the same time is where the magic happens. It’s an art and a craft and a measure of good judgement with a little bit of luck mixed in.
Storytelling is part of what makes us human, from ancient cave paintings to sitting around the fire telling them, stories help us make sense of and find meaning in the world and in our lives. Animation makes the impossible possible and as Walt Disney so brillantly put it: “Animation has all of life’s possibilities without any of it’s limitations.” — That is why motion.