Ceci Erlich on Type, Time and the Beauty of Motion.

By Renée Elizabeth Clarke.

October 13, 2020.

Ceci Erlich is motion designer and multi-disciplinary artist based in Madrid. We caught up with Ceci to chat about the drive behind her eye-catching motion work, working with different softwares and to learn more about how she got to where she is today. 

Can you tell us about what you do and your motion type work? 

I am a freelance graphic and motion designer based in Madrid. I studied Fine Art and I have developed my professional career working in TV channels such as Canal + and MTV. I have focused on areas of graphic identity, events branding and promotional clips. Currently I am working on corporate image projects, motion graphics and digital content.

I like working with motion because it adds another dimension to graphic design. It allows you to incorporate all the expressive and narrative qualities offered by temporal linearity. I feel very comfortable working at the intersection between graphic and movement. Over the years, I have become accustomed to think about design from a moving perspective, and about graphics from a behavioural one.   

Like most designers, I have internalised processes to connect or combine one thing with another. The jobs I like the most are those that succeed in bringing together text, form and colour in a balance way within a dynamic graphic system. Typeface is a source of constant inspiration to me. I have always enjoyed playing with words and text and, through movement, I can add another layer of meaning. Motion type allows you to intervene and transform texts, which become malleable visual shapes or masses of density. I am obsessed with creating a very clean movement, with seemingly simple mechanisms, internal coherence and that are able to catch the viewer’s attention. I try to bring a new conceptual dimension to each job.

You mentioned that you have been working in motion design from a young age. What attracted you to it? 

Ever since I was a child, I have always been fascinated by TV graphics and film credits, I even found the simplest title or lower third fascinating. The way they appear to float on the screen felt like magic to me and I was very curious about what lay behind them. During my last year at university, I was awarded an internship to work in the graphic department at a TV channel. It was a privilege to have this opportunity partly because the tools that we were using to create moving graphics were not widely available (this was before we started using After Effects). I had the opportunity to work with generous and creative colleagues who had tonnes of experience and taught me lots of new valuable things. I learnt the mystery behind the credits and I was taken by the possibilities and the world of moving graphics, which became my profession.

What drives you to put text in motion?

The choice of typography and how we apply it is part of the design process. Sometimes typography works so well in the project that it doesn’t need much more, but in general I like to add a graphical treatment to achieve a more personal result. I have always been attracted to the duality of typography: it is language and it is pure abstract forms. Designers work with these two concepts at the same time, establishing relationships among them. In motion type we add time as a factor in the equation. In this way you have the usual resources of graphic design and the possibility that these resources are variable — can interact with each other — is added. In this way, typography starts to have a ‘behaviour’.

It is fascinating how besides moving, or transforming the texts, you can also intervene in the order, the duration, the colour variations, the rhythms… It gives you the possibility of thinking in a different way, creating a composition also through the timeline.

The applications of motion type are very varied, from a menu board of a hamburger bar, a street advertisement, the development of a graphic identity, visuals, content in social networks, motion posters, gifs… and their approaches are also usually very different.

I love to work on projects with a lot of information and find an ideal way to distribute it along the video. I love to choose what is shown first or what has to be read in each moment.

Would you say the popularisation of After Effects has changed the style trends or usage of motion graphics? What software did you use before AE? 

There were different composition systems before After Effects. I initially learnt with HAL from Quantel, which was a lineal graphic editing system that was very popular when it came out. We had only one in our department and we had to take it in turns. It was a much craftier way of working and many of the processes were made frame by frame. Later, I was very impressed when we received the first After Effects. It took me a while to adapt to it because I thought the animations and graphics were far too clean and weightless. Just like the difference between listening to vinyl records and CDs. Thanks to these new tools we were able to increase production, with all its advantages and disadvantages. There is no question about the fact that it opened a myriad of possibilities and new ways of experimentation. However, the increase in productivity meant that the time invested in earlier crafty approaches was now being taken up by a demand to produce more pieces. Outside the TV departments, it meant that everyone could have access to motion at home. That was an important shift within the industry.

How would you describe motion design to someone who cannot see?

Actually, it is very similar to some of the resources that we use in sound and music. Rhythm, harmony, timbre, tone, silence, volume etc. We can translate all these elements to moving graphics to give shape to a message or to create a composition. Similarly, you can make a commercial radio ad, or recite a poem, sing a song, play a symphony with an orchestra, recreate a conversation or improvise a musical piece.

What are you working on now?

Right now I am working on a beautiful project for teta & teta, a non profit association based in Madrid. They define themselves as a social, activist and feminist brand. I am also doing smaller projects with motion graphics. In terms of personal projects, I would like to be able to dedicate more time to Pruna Studio, a visual arts proposal that I initiated a few years ago and in which I swap the computer for painting and other materials to create mobile artworks and small sculptures. It is another way to continue working with movement and colour. 

Right now I work much more with digital tools than with paint and the use of typography is continuous, but maybe from a more formal point of view. I was always fascinated by painters who included words or phrases in their paintings like Twombly,

Basquiat… I find the perception of text as abstraction and how it relates to form and colour fascinating.

Looking ahead, I would like to get involved in education.  At the moment I am thinking maybe a Motion Design workshop focused on methods of graphic experimentation because there are already a lot of tutorials on how to reproduce an effect, and many step-by-step guides. For me it is very interesting too try to find the keys useful for a designer to develop and create their own resources.

Particularly working freelance, how do you balance personal projects with professional projects?

I always try to find a balance between them, they are interconnected. Commercial work allows me to earn a living, in that respect it’s always a priority. However, I have a very deep connection with my personal projects, as they allow me to unleash my creativity and to learn and develop an idea in total freedom. They are a source of knowledge and new ideas that help me with my professional projects, and give me the confidence I need to take on new challenges. 

Actually, my personal projects originate in an experimental approach to working, which is closer to artistic activity. My father is an artist, and his studio was always a place where I could go and work from a very early age. There I learnt how important it is to have the time and space where you are free to create and develop new ideas. 

I often focus on the tools, the resources or the formal possibilities without searching for a concrete outcome. When I find something that catches my eye and that I can see has potential, I work around a concept and it becomes a personal project. Many of these personal projects have allowed me to show the things I can make, and often they have generated enough interest and have ended up becoming commercial commissions.  

What was the first thing you made that you were proud of and are you still proud of it?

My first jobs seem like a long way ago. However, in motion design I remember an Ident for a documentary channel. It may look a bit naïve now, but at the time I was very proud of it. I tend to think that each project has its moment and each one is a way to learn something new — they’ve all been small steps in the learning process. 

Sometimes it happens that I am not entirely satisfied with the end result of a project. I don’t obsess about it though. There are often many factors at play, not only my work, but also the conditions within which that work was produced. It is a good exercise to be able to be critical with one’s own work because a fundamental part of the creative process is to question everything around you. There are projects that I find hard to look at as I wasn’t happy with the end result. However, the client was happy and the project served its function, then I wonder was it a good job or a bad one?