I’ve already shared why <a href="/google-design/motion-design-doesnt-have-to-be-hard-33089196e6c2">Motion Design Doesn’t Have to be Hard </a>, but I wanted to make it even easier for designers to use the Material motion principles I know and love. After Effects is the primary tool our team uses to create motion examples for the <a href="https://bit.ly/2L5R0K6">Material guidelines </a>. Having used it to animate my fair share of UIs, I wanted to share my workflow tips and…

A basic sticker sheet and workflow for animating user interfaces

Download this basic sticker sheet to see a project completed using my streamlined workflow (outlined below). It contains a collection of Material components, baseline UIs, and navigation transitions.

My After Effects sticker sheet

First things first, we need assets to animate. Most of the visual designers on our team use Sketch, which by default doesn’t interface with AE. Thankfully <a href="https://www.battleaxe.co/">Adam Plouff </a>has created <a href="https://adamplouff.github.io/aeux-doc/">this plugin </a>that adds this functionality. I used it to import our library of baseline Material components from Sketch into AE. These assets are found in the sticker sheet’s Components folder.

Importing assets into AE

With this library of baseline components, new UIs can quickly be assembled by dragging them into a new AE comp.

Creating UIs

Master properties in Ae make it possible to create a single reusable asset. The App bar is often customized by changing its Icons, colors and shadows. You can find these in the baseline UIS folder in the Download.

Customizing components

The examples in the navigation transitions folder illustrate a method for applying material motion patterns in after effects. To start, each property is animated without easing. The parent composition is then time Remapped to apply easing and set duration for all the nested Keyframes. This allows for quick adjustments to easing and duration since only two time Remapped Keyframes control the entire transition. This method can be used to consistently animate most transitions that use material motion principles.

Animating transitions

Stashed ideas

Guide to Material Motion in After Effects

This design trend is all about the feeling of warmth, comfort, and relaxation. It's as if we're introducing humanity back into design.

Cozy Design

When design, fashion, and decor feel a little too perfect, this design type swings back in the other direction in order to inject some life back into the design that gives it a little bit of nostalgia.

Analog Media Mimicry

Mimicking analog effects:<ul><li>Practical photography</li><li>Painting / Drawing</li><li>Collage</li><li>Sculpture</li><li>Scanning / Film</li><li>Sewing, etc.,</li></ul>This design type is wortht the time it takes to make because of its "unique" feel to it and often it's quite visually stunning.&nbsp;

Analog Methods and Practical Design Techniques

Fine art is making a comeback as a design trend. A reawakening of the craft. Even Alexander McQueen took their paintbrushes out of storage!

Fine Art

Palettes are getting softer and new color systems may shift toward the warmer end of the spectrum for a cozier appeal that feels human.

Warmer, Softer Colors

The theme of this design trend is comfort in authenticity. There are so many things happening when it comes to technology, social media, politics, and traditional media to the point that we're just aching for slow-down comfort.&nbsp;

The craving for slow-down comfort

Whenever you write a design trend article, I think it’s required to mention how much you hate design trend articles, and how they’re always way behind the times, and how the trends are always stupid…

Tastemaking: 2019 Design Trends

The term Feature Factory is when a software developer is just sitting in the factory, churning out features, and sending them down the factory line.

The Feature Factory

<ul><li>Teams do not measure the impact of their work. Or measurement is done in isolation by the product management team.</li><li>Rapid shuffling of teams and projects. Teams deal in feature and project assignments.</li><li>Success theatre around shipping, but little discussion about impact.</li><li>Infrequent acknowledged failures and scrapped work. The measure of success is delivered features, not outcomes.&nbsp;</li><li>No connection to core metrics. The team cannot connect work to key business and customer satisfaction metrics.</li><li>No product managers retrospectives on the quality of their product decisions.</li></ul>

Signs You’re Working in a Feature Factory

<ul><li>There is a mismatch between prioritising what gets worked on and deciding if it was the right thing to work on.</li><li>No tweaking. Once the work is done, the team instantly moves to the next "project", leaving no time to iterate.</li><li>The prevailing culture of hand-offs with no involvement in research, problem exploration, or experimentation.</li><li>Large batches instead of delivering incrementally.</li><li>Chasing upfront revenue.</li><li>Little appreciation for the health of the whole project and instead focus on shiny new objects.</li></ul>

More Signs You’re Working in a Feature Factory

I’ve used the term Feature Factory at a couple conference talks over the past two years. I started using the term when a software developer friend complained that he was “just sitting in the factory…

Charles Brown
@charlesbro

A basic sticker sheet and workflow for animating user interfaces

Guide to Material Motion in After Effects

Cozy Design

Tastemaking: 2019 Design Trends

The Feature Factory

12 Signs You’re Working in a Feature Factory

Charles Brown@charlesbro

A basic sticker sheet and workflow for animating user interfaces

Guide to Material Motion in After Effects

Cozy Design

Tastemaking: 2019 Design Trends

The Feature Factory

12 Signs You’re Working in a Feature Factory

Charles Brown
@charlesbro