Kinetic typography – language and words in the news

Kinetic typography is the new BuzzWord this week on Macmillan Dictionary.

The term, which in fact is a fancy name for ‘text in motion with audio’, and is also referred to as motion typography, is not new but it has gained noticeable popularity over the last decade or so, particularly in films, namely in title sequences and credits. One of its earliest instances is in the opening sequence of Alfred Hitchcock’s film North by Northwest (1959) but it also features in the title sequence of Psycho (1960) (the latter not for the faint-hearted!). This site specialises in title design and includes a number of examples of kinetic typography used on the big screen.

In more contemporary examples, a key component of kinetic typography is audio (be it music or voice). In this rendering of US poet Edna St. Vincent Millay’s lyrical poem Renascence, typography and text dominate and audio (music) plays second fiddle. More recently, US President Barack Obama’s speeches have been particularly inspiring to fans and creators of motion typography. This one, based on Obama’s Victory Speech, is a fantastic example of how kinetic typography brings traditional typography, design and speech together to create something quite powerful.

Have I converted you yet? Here are some further links for you to explore:
10 Beautiful Motion Typography Videos

If you’d like to give it a go, there’s a helpful tutorial here.

Our very own examples include:

A video celebrating English as a Global language.

The 21st Century Flux by rapper and wordsmith Dizraeli. (Quite a hit!)

And this video, which also ponders language change, one of the main topics in this blog: