I’m a big admirer of the work coming out of Afternoon, Inc., so any chance to collaborate with them is one I take enthusiastically. On this project, they brought me in to assist with motion concept development and brand asset exploration. Essentially helping to define how the visual language of their system could move, react, and feel in motion.
My role focused on building the foundational motion rules — the underlying logic that governs timing, transition behavior, and compositional rhythm, then creating a series of modular motion elements that could be assembled into larger sequences by the Afternoon team. Think of it as designing the grammar and vocabulary for motion, and then watching a talented team write poetry with it.
Look, in all fairness, all I really did was help create some rules and then make a bunch of bits and pieces based on those rules…Afternoon, Inc. stitched them together to make something beautiful. And I can’t emphasize enough how much the talent of Joel Pickard doing the sound design helped level it up even further.
The assets themselves — from looping screensaver-style animations to title cards for conference materials — were built for flexibility. Each piece was rooted in repetition, visual symmetry, and temporal balance, drawing on the fundamentals of motion design theory to create flow and continuity across the system.
This project was an exercise in high-concept motion design as system architecture — finding the intersection between structured rules and expressive outcomes. By defining core motion principles early, we ensured that everything downstream — animation, transitions, timing — felt intentional and unified.
Even in its most minimal forms, the motion conveyed personality: elastic yet grounded, clean yet human. It’s proof that thoughtful design systems can yield creative freedom when built on strong foundations.
Role:
Motion Design, Concept Development
