Principles in motion
When you’re designing motion, you’re designing with time. Understanding the mechanics turns movement into meaning.
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Illustrations by Matija Medved
Across marketing pages, social assets, brand videos, and presentations, motion is how ideas come to life. It lets design unfold over time, using rhythm, sound, and sequencing to direct attention and shape meaning.
We asked three Figma motion designers—Chad Colby, Ben Hill, and Gilles Desmadrille—to explain the principles of motion, how to expand the possibilities for storytelling, and how AI is changing their craft.
What’s the biggest difference between graphic design and motion design?
In graphic design, everything’s communicated through frozen moments in time. Motion removes that constraint, introducing rhythm, pacing, transformation, and character. The foundations remain the same, with clarity and intent at the core.
We think more in multiple frames. Instead of trying to condense every element of the story into a single image, we break it up—first this, then that—so it’s easier to digest.
It’s really about how you use that element of time in motion to tell a story or communicate an idea. How do you use easing and timing to evoke a feeling or get across what you’re trying to say? There’s a deep connection to the way it syncs up with sound, too. When you think about music, the way beats are structured—it’s all timing, just like motion.
I’m always in awe of how well sound and image come together to create something bigger than the sum of its parts. Your brain makes connections you couldn’t have planned out. That is pretty foundational in the way that I approach things: leaving some things to chance and being open to those happy accidents.
Where do you find references to determine how something should move?
I think the foundational thing is understanding physics. Motion is rooted in how things move in the real world. Let’s say you’re trying to animate or prompt a bouncing ball. It starts really fast, springs back up, then slows as it reaches the top. Then it falls again, and each bounce gets lower. Being able to capture that feeling is really important.
If you’re finding your inspiration solely from other motion work, then you’ll likely fall into the expected trends (bouncy balls and rectangles only go so far). If you’re drawing from movement in nature, the storytelling devices and editing tricks from film, or even gestural forms in art and design, that will set you apart.
At the end of the day, people will recognize when motion is “good,” even if they can’t explain why. Design is more subjective. Motion’s relationship to the real world makes that distinction.
If you’re drawing from movement in nature, the storytelling devices and editing tricks from film, or even gestural forms in art and design, that will set you apart.
Mini motion glossary: Core principles
Ease in/ease out: How motion accelerates and decelerates over time
Anticipation: A preparatory movement that signals what’s about to happen
Overshoot: Moving slightly past the final position before settling back
Follow-through: Secondary motion that continues after the main movement stops
Hold: A pause that gives the viewer time to register what just happened
Settle: The final, subtle motion as something comes to rest
How do you translate what you see in the real world into how motion should feel?
I think the big one is easing, which is how we describe timing and how things settle into place. Another one is match cut, where you go from one shot to another but connect them through the same movement. You might go from slow, to fast, to slow again, and do a hard cut at the fastest point, and it ends up feeling like a seamless transition. Transitions are a big part of how we think about motion. They are key to connecting the different beats of a story, helping everything feel cohesive and unified. For example, many of our launch videos showcase multiple use cases for a feature, but they still need to feel like one continuous experience, so we use transitions and well placed cuts to maintain momentum and rhythm, keeping the viewer engaged throughout.
We talk a lot about the pacing of movement and how something communicates—what’s the story arc or the big crescendo moment that really makes something impactful? Then we get really nerdy and in the weeds over keyframe curves, frame rates, and expressions (bits of JavaScript) to really dial in the detail of motion.
When we present our work to a broader group, we use a lot of sound effects to sell the idea in the motion. I’ve been on calls where we’re like, “This will move from left to right,” and it doesn’t click until someone says, “It’ll go, ‘Whoop!’”
Where do you see the biggest opportunities for motion to become more integrated with other design workflows?
The idea that you can be on the canvas, working on a design and testing animation, seeing what’s working and what’s not in real time—that’s a big shift. Before, you had to move between different tools and platforms. Now everything can happen on the multiplayer canvas, which lets people move and riff faster and raises the bar for how design and motion work together.
Motion cuts through. It explains what words can't, and brands know it—which is why the appetite for great motion work keeps growing. At the same time, it’s very time-consuming, so it’s hard for motion teams to keep up with the pace of design and iterate in quite the same way. But working in one software for design and animation is really exciting. It’ll be interesting to see what doors open.
What excites me is the number of people who will discover or fall in love with motion who otherwise wouldn’t have. That’s what happened to me. I never knew I wanted to be a motion designer, but I played around with some tools and realized: This is so much cooler than working in a single frame.
Motion has always felt like magic to people, partly because there are fewer motion designers than there are other designers. Now, rather than waiting for one motion designer, more people can contribute earlier and push ideas up the ladder faster.
Mini motion glossary: Team shorthand
Zippy: Fast, energetic movement
Make it dreamy: Softer, more atmospheric motion
Chunky: Deliberate, less-elegant movement, as if physically handled
Make it snappier: Needs quicker timing and sharper easing
Feels floaty: Lacks weight or connection to real-world physics
Too linear: Moves at a constant speed—feels mechanical
Dead on arrival: Lacks energy, intent, or clarity
How do you see things evolving with AI? What are you excited about? Is there anything you’re wary of?
In After Effects, motion often meant adding expressions and scripting to control properties and build systems, so you were essentially coding. When I was coming up, most animators couldn’t code, so we relied on a spreadsheet of expressions we’d copy and paste into projects. Now, motion prompting changes that. You can sketch ideas quickly—whether something is slow, fast, or bouncy—while also handling the technical side. Once something is defined and backed by code, you can reuse it anywhere. That’s a huge unlock.
A lot of people will do flashy motion for motion’s sake, while others are going to use it more thoughtfully to communicate and guide users. Skill, craft, intention, and restraint are going to be the differentiating factors.
Having control of time and intention with it will be essential—understanding that time is your new tool, a new element you can design with. If it’s just moving, and you’re not evoking anything or saying anything, you’re basically just adding a filter on top of a design.
It’s going to be very easy to create good motion, but if you don’t understand the basic motion principles, it’s going to be hard to create great motion. People have been doing this for a long time. There are things that have held up for 100 years, and there’s a reason for it. As technology progresses, it’s going to be important to keep those foundational principles. It’s what keeps things human.
Anja is a writer and editor on Figma's Story Studio team. Previously, she's worked as a content strategist at Google Design and holds an MA in Design Research, Writing & Criticism from SVA.
