The Language of Motion

Jan Kubasiewicz, Professor
Dynamic Media Institute at Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston

Motion is integral to communication design, and motion literacy – the act of understanding how motion can be used to communicate more effectively – is essential for both designers and educators. Communicating effectively through motion involves familiarity with the grammar of kinetic form, and its spatial and temporal parameters. Instead of reinventing the wheel communication designers should explore the grammar of kinetic form that has already been explored within various disciplines such as music, choreography, and cinema.

Motion is a natural state of things, and designers must realize that the environment of communication design is dynamic—not static. Designers must see design parameters not in terms of Platonic opposites (big/small, much/little, light/heavy, hard/soft) but as taxonomy of design variables. It is a process of forming rather than form. It is not necessarily either/or but rather if/then.

Like all aspects of communication design, communicating effectively via motion relies on mastering certain conventions to convey a range of notions and emotions across time—from a sensible gesture, through a dramatic tension, to a violent collision. To make things more complicated, combining kinetic form with other “languages”—with words, imagery, and sound—multiplies designers’ opportunities to create meaning… or confusion.

This paper will attempt to codify the language of motion in the context of communication design and its education. The paper will present the results of experimental and multidisciplinary approaches to investigating time, motion and sound as a meaningful gesture that communicates.