5 Styles of Art Direction for Motion Graphics

Learn how to define the style of your audiovisual projects with Helio Vega

Helio Vega (@heliovega) has been a designer, producer, creative, and audiovisual art director for more than 12 years. He has worked for brands such as Coca-Cola, Ford, CBS, Spain Media, Al Jazeera, and HBO, amongst others. He shares with us everything we need to know to bring ideas to life with animated graphics.

To help you develop your projects’ visuals, and to conceptualize the ideas you wish to communicate into animated graphics, you must understand various artistic styles and be able to judge their utility and purpose.
Find below five examples of basic styles of art direction for motion graphics, shared by Helio.

Informative

An example of this visual style is the work of Danny Yount, designer and art director of the titles for the movie Sherlock Holmes. This style relies on knowing the main character of the story well, in this case, a detective who reads the paper every morning to find a case to solve. The titles match the essence of the protagonist perfectly.

Liquid

This style connects directly with the world of daydreaming: it is based on the use of ethereal elements that seem to softly move and float, reminding us of the movement of objects on water. A good example is Metamorphosis, a piece by Buck for Good Books.

Academic

This style follows all the basic patterns of graphic design: symmetry, order of composition and use of color aimed at conveying concrete messages. A good example of the use of grids for this purpose is the work carried out by studio Man Vs Machine for their branding and identity of British TV channel Film4.

Playful

This is an alternative visual style the aim of which is to surprise and draw the attention of an audience, more than focus on a story. It is based on the use of deep colors and creating a highly attractive visual. Have a look at this example: this is Peripetics, the project executed by studio Zeitguised for an exhibition opening at Zirkel gallery.

Persuasive

Persuasive style has been traditionally used by governments that seek to convince the people to follow a certain ideology–like propaganda posters in the former Soviet Union, full of black and red colors imbued of political symbolism.–. The teaser from the first season of Americans, by FX, is a clear example of the use of this visual conceptualization.

If you want to know more about the artistic conceptualization of ideas for animated audiovisual projects, enroll in Helio Vega’s course Art Direction for Motion Graphics.

You may be also interested in:

- Introduction to Narrative Design for Video Games, a course by Victor Ojuel.
- Digital Painting for Characters: Color and Light, a course by Joel Santana.
- 10 Essential Books to Spark Your Creativity.