Scanimate vs Synthwave
スキャニメイト / シンセウェーブ
Scanimate comes from Broadcast Design and Synthwave from Digital Retro. One is technique and the other style. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Scanimate
An analog video synthesizer that distorted images on a CRT electrically and in real time. It is the true source of the glowing, flying, undulating logos of 1970s and 80s television, and it carried the motion industry before digital.
Synthwave
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Replays the future the 1980s imagined, in neon and horizon lines.
| Scanimate | Synthwave | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1969–1980s | 1980s imagined future |
| Family | Broadcast Design | Digital Retro |
| Kind | Technique | Style |
| Cues | Glowing outlines / Electronic undulation / Rainbow glow / Scanline texture | Neon / Perspective grid / Sunset / Black sky |
| Best used for | Rebuilding the air of 1970s and 80s television as a deliberate effect · Giving a logo the unstable glow and stretch that digital tools lack | Instant world-building for games and music · The euphoria of retro-futurism |
| Type | Heavy single letters lit from inside their own outline | Oblique sans with script accents |
| Composition | One element on black, stretched from far to near | Low horizon, central perspective, gigantic title |
| Material | Scanlines and rainbow bleed, with color fringing left on the edges | Black, magenta, cyan, glow |
| Caution | Layering glow and scanlines on top while the undulation itself still moves with the smooth interpolation of today's tools. | Sun and grid alone are overfamiliar. Add story elements of your own. |