dev|sushi

kinetic [adj.] Of, relating to, or produced by motion.
typography [n.] The general character or appearance of printed matter.

I was browsing through the typography tagged bookmarks on Ma.gnolia.com over the weekend and ran into a video that I found extremely engaging to watch. The video was comprised of lyrics moving on screen set to music; the timing of the words appearing was synchronized to the vocals too great effect. See for yourself.

The Hush Sound - The Lions Roar

I’ve seen stuff like this before on occasion and have always been captivated. TBS did a few self promotional advertisements for Everybody loves Raymond and Seinfeld that used the technique to punctuate well-known series moments. The only unfortunate part was they used Arial Rounded Bold which in my opinion is much overused in their marketing.

A second bookmark on Ma.gnolia.com also caught my eye during my search. It was a kinetic typography video set to Samuel L. Jackson’s amazing speech in Pulp Fiction. At a few points in the video the camera motion didn’t work very well causing the type to be lost but overall it is good. The video has been going around the web and is linked on a few different services including boing boing but check out the author’s site which has some other interesting stuff.

Intonation - Jarratt Moody

Motionographer, one of the linking sites, had a lengthy discussion about how this was ripped off from a video done by MK12 called MachoBox (boring warning). The site is an authority on motion graphics so they would know and I can see why they would say it but I don’t agree that it was “ripped off”. The author of the video is a student at Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) and is taking a course on kinetic typography where the instructor likely gave them the reference material to pull from for the project.

BCST 369 Time-based Typography I
This course addresses historical and contemporary typographic design concepts using film and television. Students construct graphic elements and typography for use in projects while addressing issues of motion and dynamic relationships. Prerequisite: GRDS 205.
SCAD Course List

After watching these videos I decided to see if I could find more so I went trolling through YouTube with a search for kinetic typography and didn’t really turn up anything worth watching. I did find a music video by zero 7 that is alright (not sure if it is the official video or not). If you’re wondering where you’ve heard that name before it was probably from their inclusion on the Garden State soundtrack or movie. Have you seen anything out there like this? I’d love some more links to check out.