Here we talk about the most amazing and popular web animation and motion graphics trends that will catch your eye in the nearest future.
by Dana Kachan
Geometric Walk Cycle by Aslan Almukhambetov for Fireart Studio
Motion often drives emotion. It can be the necessary spice for your website design to taste perfect for users. It adds dynamics and breathes life into a static UI. Fun, intriguing, and appealing — it may be different and adds charm to a website. Are you looking for a cool motion graphics idea for your site? We don’t promise you’ll find it here. But… Yes, we have something special for you — the most popular motion graphic effects and eye-catching website animation examples that will dominate your screens in 2020–2021.
Welcome on board! Your trip to the animation world starts right NOW.
Background Animation
You can create an animated brand story, show a fun manufacturing process, or introduce your team via charismatic animated heroes. There are a lot of ideas to use animation on website background. From financial organizations, banks, and healthcare companies to eCommerce retailers, restaurants, and B2B service providers — you can find websites with an animated background across different niches and industries.
People love background animation because it allows them to learn more about the company once they entered a site. This type of animation works like the brand’s visit card introducing it at a glance. You will be surprised to learn how background motion graphics can improve UX.
Airline responsive web by Quan for Fireart Studio
IOCO / Biocomputer by Mike | Creative Mints
Animated Logos
Animated logos have been trendy for the past several years, and they are at the top of web animation trends today. By adding various visual effects, motion designers create different types of logo animation: rotating logo, morphing logo, hiding and revealing logo, expanding logo, hard-drawn animated logo, 3D animation logo, etc.
Most often, a logo is the first thing we see when entering a website. It should be memorable, catchy, and reveal the brand personality using only a symbol or typography. Animation can emphasize the brand’s features by telling a short story with a few motions and effects. For instance, if your company has a fun logotype, you can add a shaking or bubbling animation to highlight a fun aspect of your brand image.
IQOO by Nicolas Girard
Logo Animation in After Effects Lego by MaxKravchenko
Cassatka logo animation by Motion Design School
Liquid Motion
It’s eye-catching and flowing like water or any other liquid. Liquid motion is the next web design trend worth considering. It adds a lot of style and interactivity to a site layout. Seems, it can hypnotize with its flawlessness and calmness. If you want to add delightful design accents to your website and create an incredible user experience, liquid animation is likely what you need. It may have a slow, flowy movement that ripples or ebbs and flows. You can make it react to a mouse hover or activate it on the scroll.
Liquid Effect by Asha Rajput
INTERCOM by Judson Collier
Experiment by Gilles Tossoukpé
Kinetic Typography
Kinetic typography or moving text is the animation technique that mixes typography and motion. Do you want to try how it would look like on your website? Go ahead! Today, many remarkable brands use kinetic typography in web design to add a feeling of movement and innovation to their look online.
It’s exciting how a simple text combined with the right tone, pace, and typography style can evoke bright emotions and powerful associations. Kinetic typography can help the user focus on what’s being said on a website and understand it at different perception levels.
Coming Soon 😃 by Nathan Riley
Typographic Slider by Hervé Rbna
Loading Animation
According to Digital Synopsis, 47% of users expect a webpage to load in 2 seconds or even less. After 4 seconds, the average user starts getting frustrated, and after 8 seconds, they leave. One-second delay may result in lost users and conversions. However, there is a secret that can make them stay even after 8 seconds.
Don’t want to make users bored while a website is loading? No need. You can use loading animation, as it is something worth taking time to watch it. It may be so engaging that users may want your site to be loading even longer to enjoy it. There are so many types of loading animation! It’s better to demonstrate at least several of them than to try to describe them.
Animation by Boing Boing
Loading by 山顶漫
Hover Effects
Hover animation is the classics of web motion graphics. It is the most used type of website animation that continues to gain momentum today. Why is it so popular? Probably, because of the ease of implementation and an exciting user experience that it creates. It allows you to achieve beautiful results on a website with minimum efforts.
Masterfully used, it creates such a magnetic effect that it’s difficult to stop hovering on the objects again and again. It turns the web user experience into a game. Such playful website interactions can bring users delight and satisfaction. However, it’s also crucial to understand the power of balance and not overuse this effect in web design.
3d hover interactions by Andy Selimov for Fireart Studio
Animated Galleries & Slideshows
Last but not least! The trend of animated galleries and slideshows has become popular in recent years. It looks like a sequence of images automatically replacing reach other on the website background. Commonly, image transitions are monotonic, simple, or soft, so that this animation doesn’t distract the user from the primary goal. Galleries and slideshows are easy to use because they naturally mimic real-life photo album functionality.
Banksy’s site gallery by Victor Nikitin for Fireart Studio
Takeaway
By now, animation has proven its staying power in mediums far older than web design. In recent years, it has become one of the most popular web design trends too. From animated logos, liquid motion, and kinetic typography to loading animation, hover effects, and other types — there are so many incredible options to use it in web design and breathe life into website layouts. Hopefully, this brief overview of the largest web animation trends will inspire you to do new experiments in web design and create even more exciting digital experiences.
Source: Medium.com / Design + Sketch