Kinetic Typography vs Saul Bass Title Design

キネティック・タイポグラフィ / ソール・バスのタイトルデザイン

Kinetic Typography comes from タイポグラフィ and Saul Bass Title Design from Broadcast Design. One is technique and the other style. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.

Kinetic Typography

Kinetic Typography — 『フラッシュ・ゴードン』オープニング・クロール 1940 — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain

Kinetic typography uses changes in position, speed, scale, form and timing to build tone of voice, emotion and attention along a timeline. Type is not a caption layer; its movement carries meaning.

Saul Bass Title Design

Saul Bass Title Design — ソール・バス『スパルタカス』タイトルロゴ 1960 — Wikimedia Commons / CC0Saul Bass Title Design — Saul Bass による『或る殺人』の図像 1959 — Wikimedia Commons / Public domainSaul Bass Title Design — Saul Bass による『栄光への脱出』のポスター 1960 — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain

Moves flat cut paper shapes and hand drawn capitals along simple straight paths in time with the music, stating the theme before the film begins.

Kinetic TypographySaul Bass Title Design
Era1950s–1955 to 1990s
FamilyタイポグラフィBroadcast Design
KindTechniqueStyle
CuesSpeed and size changing with vocal emphasis / Entrances and exits offset by word or character / Travel, rotation or deformation matching a word's meaning / Temporal hierarchy built from holds and reading orderFlat cut paper silhouettes / A palette held to a few colors / Uneven hand drawn capitals / Simple moves along straight lines
Best used forJoining tone of voice and moving type in titles, advertising and lyric films · Adding emotion and emphasis to short explanations or conversations without soundHanding over a work's theme and temperature before the story starts · Redesigning the obligation of credits as a piece in its own right
TypeBreak copy into words and syllables, mapping speed, holds and scale changes to what each unit says.One face only, entrances and exits designed to the musical beat
CompositionLimit how much is read at once and use the next word's position to preview eye direction.Hand the names to the moving shapes, fix one reading position
MaterialMove only the necessary axes among position, rotation, scale, tracking, weight and opacity, testing legibility at rest.Art built apart from the feature, few colors, one repeated motif
CautionWhen every letter always bounces, motion becomes noise. Keep passages still whenever removing motion would not change meaning.Decoration unrelated to the feature is not the form, since only the structure that summarizes the theme survives, and when moving the names becomes the point there is no time to read them.

Put these two together

タイポグラフィ ／ Broadcast Design

IndexStyle