A book ⬩ A thesis ⬩ A point of view
Motion graphics
grows up.
One argument, made at book length: why the old way of making video broke, and the system that replaces it.
18 chapters ⬩ in progress
The gap.
It happened platform by platform. YouTube made video a channel any company could own. Instagram and TikTok made it the native language of attention, and every platform since has rebuilt itself around it: feeds went video-first, stories and shorts minted new formats, and every format arrived with its own ratio, duration, and grammar. Then 2020 pushed the rest of business life onto screens, and the shift became total. A company can now need more video in a quarter than it used to commission in a decade.
Production never made the same jump. It kept the same shape it had in the DVD era: one artist, one enormous file, rebuilt from scratch for every ratio and every revision. Demand went exponential. Production stayed linear.
Every field that hit a wall like this grew up by producing a new kind of professional. Film invented the producer. The web invented the design-systems engineer. Motion graphics never had that moment: twenty years of tutorials taught everyone how to make things, and almost nothing about how to run the work. This book, and the system it describes, is that moment arriving late.
The Modern Motion
Graphics Playbook.
The full argument for why the gap opened, and the system that closes it: design-systems thinking for motion, production run like a real production, and video treated as owned infrastructure instead of a rented, recurring cost. The manuscript is in its final push. It ships as one release; the list gets it first.
- The gap that grew
- What broke and why
- Design systems for motion
- Running production like production
- Fourteen more chapters
The point of view
A point of view,
not a portfolio.
Modern Motion Graphics is a brand built around one argument: that motion has to grow up, from a craft practiced one file at a time into a system a business can own and scale. The book makes the case; the system makes it real.
- The thesisVideo as owned infrastructure, not rented cost.
- The systemDesign systems and production management, for motion.
- The practiceBringing it in-house, and owning the capability.
The ladder.
There are five positions a motion designer can occupy, and most careers stall on the second.
- 1
Pair of hands.
Executes a defined brief. Competes on price and speed. Interchangeable.
- 2
Craftsperson.
Executes beautifully. Competes on reel quality, which means being compared, endlessly, against other reels.
- 3
Producer-designer.
Takes an unclear business objective and returns a structured, managed production. Competes on trust. Starts receiving briefs that don't fully exist yet.
- 4
The first call.
“Is ___ free?” Hired before the brief exists. Past a certain level of trust, you are the brief.
- 5
The partner.
Producer, designer, and creative director in one seat, with a stake in the outcome. Not billing for work: sharing in what the work builds. Almost nobody in motion occupies this rung yet; the last section of the book is the argument for getting there.
Software training gets people to rung two and abandons them there. The reel gets you compared; trust gets you called. The book maps the whole climb, two through five.
Ways in.
One thesis, four ways in, depending on where you sit.
The book.
The argument, the system, the vocabulary. In the final push now; ships as one release.
The list.
The first pages today, the full book on release day, and where the founding cohort will be announced.
The cohorts.
Training for motion designers who want to run the work, not just do it. Forming.
The enterprise curriculum.
For teams who need the system installed today. Lives at ScalableVideo.co.
Get the sampler.
The Modern Motion Graphics Playbook ships as one release, and it's in the final push now. Join the list and two things happen: the sampler arrives immediately (the Foreword, the Liner Notes, and two chapters), and the full book lands in your inbox the day it's done. One or two dispatches between now and then. No noise.
Questions.
Talk to the author.
For teams that have outgrown one-off video and want to talk about what installing the system would look like: the calendar is open. Thirty minutes, no pitch, no deck. If you're a designer here for the climb, the list is your door; the cohorts will be announced there.
Prefer to open it in a new tab? cal.com/jordanlloyd ↗
Written by Jordan Lloyd, motion design consultant and founder of Modern Motion Graphics & Scalable Video.