Kinetic Typography

This video holds a specific place in my work.
It is a pivot point that shaped my career twice, in ways I did not anticipate when I made it.

Two separate stories, years apart, both leading back to this one video.

01. The First Story

Around 2012 to 2016, Motion Design moved from a niche specialization into a mainstream design requirement. When I was interviewing with different companies in Munich, Germany in 2012, it was still obscure enough that I had never encountered it.

I applied for a Motion Designer position anyway. During the interview, we went through the work I had done as a freelance designer and photographer. They seemed to like what they saw. Then they asked if I had any Motion Design examples.

I panicked. I said yes, but that I had forgotten my hard drive at home.

I remember them saying they really liked my work so far. They said they wanted to see what I could do in Motion Design. They asked me to send two examples via email.

I said of course.

The problem was that until that exact moment in the interview, I did not know what Motion Design was. The closest thing I had done were flash animations.

I still remember leaving that office. It was Friday around noon. That meant I had until Monday to send those two Motion Design examples.

I went home and typed Motion Design into a search bar. I started watching tutorials, and worked through the entire weekend with minimal sleep, trying to create two Motion Design videos that were decent enough to convince them it was not my very first time doing it.

This Kinetic Typography video was one of the two very first Motion Design pieces I ever made. I finished it in roughly 72 hours, starting from basically zero knowledge of the discipline.

I got the job. Emotionally. In reality, I did not get the job.

But Motion Design became one of my core specializations. A few years later, I had my own agency with an entire division dedicated to Motion Design, Augmented Reality, and Virtual Reality. I called it MotionSquad.

02. The Second Story

When I was running INAGAWA, we received an inquiry email from KANTAR, one of the largest data and market research companies in the world, asking if we could do data visualizations.

One of my mentors once told me something that stayed with me: "When someone asks whether you can do something, always say yes, even if you cannot. Then figure out how to do it." So, I said yes. They invited me to a meeting.

I thought it was a conversation meeting. The informal kind, where you meet potential clients in person to see if there is a mutual fit.

It was not. It was a formal pitch.

Multiple companies and agencies were there, each presenting their capabilities. Everyone came with a team. At minimum, two people from each company. They brought materials like large black portfolio holders, presentation boards, printed decks, easels, etc. The kind of prepared, polished presence you expect when companies are competing for a contract. Imagine the look on my face when I realized this. Waiting amongst those extremely professional looking people in suits, while I came alone, wearing jeans and a t-shirt, and nothing prepared.

When it was my turn, one of the evaluators asked why I had nothing prepared while everyone else did.

I answered that I knew they had already researched my company before inviting me and already knew what we were capable of. Therefore, this was likely more an occasion to assess whether we would work well together on a personal level.

To my surprise, they seemed to like that answer.

During our conversation, I eventually pulled out my tablet and started showing them work that was not publicly available on our website. While I was going through images and examples, the Marketing Director from KANTAR stopped me. She pointed at the screen. She asked if that was New Shoes by Paolo Nutini.

I said yes.

She said it was her favorite song.

I played the video for her. She lit up. We stopped talking about data visualization entirely and started talking about the song. The energy in the room shifted, and by the end of that conversation, I walked out with the contract.

INAGAWA became the external data visualization branch of KANTAR.

We handled the majority of their visualization output from that point forward. That relationship is the reason VisualSquad was created as a dedicated division for data visualization.

MotionSquad for Motion Design. VisualSquad for Data Visualization.

That is why this Kinetic Typography video means so much to me.
It launched a discipline I had never heard of, and years later, it landed a contract that built an entire division of my agency. The same video. Twice.