Motion design isn’t about animations. It’s about behaviour, consistency, and scale.
How we build motion systems in Bisuala
One of our favourite types of work is building motion systems.
It sounds sophisticated. In practice, it’s surprisingly rare.
Most digital products, brands, and platforms use motion every day but very few define how they move. Animations exist, transitions happen, interactions respond but there’s no shared logic behind them.
A motion system is how you turn motion from decoration into behaviour.
What is a motion system?
A motion system is a set of principles, rules, and reusable patterns that define how a brand or product moves.
Not just what animates, but:
- When motion appears
- Why it exists
- How it behaves over time
It creates consistency across products, platforms, and teams, even as more people contribute to the work.
Large organisations like Uber, Google, or IBM have made their motion systems public. Not as a trend, but as infrastructure.
Motion systems help teams scale without losing clarity, tone, or intent.
A quick glance at our work
We’ve built motion systems for very different contexts:
- Lawyers
- Tech companies
- Video art festivals
- Artist collectives
- Industrial manufacturers
The reason is almost always the same.
At some point, content production needs to scale. More formats, more platforms, more people involved. Without motion guidelines, things drift. Consistency erodes. Decisions slow down. Quality becomes subjective.
Tate Esq
Our first motion system was for Tate Esq, a legal content brand.
We were helping Stan, the founder, with motion design for his growing YouTube channel. The channel worked. The business impact was real. The next challenge was scale.
Instead of animating everything manually forever, we designed:
- Clear motion principles aligned with the brand
- Reusable After Effects and Premiere templates
- A system that allowed others to produce content without breaking consistency
The key work wasn’t the templates.
It was defining how the brand behaves in motion.
Yourbana
Yourbana was a video art festival in Rome aimed at a young audience, sponsored by Mastercard and ATAC.
The identity, designed by Erik Zárraga and Angelica Barco, was bold, angular, and energetic. Our role was to translate that energy into motion.
We defined three motion principles and applied them consistently across:
- Video assets
- Social content
- Festival materials
The result felt alive without feeling chaotic.
The project was later featured in Brands in Motion.
Suki (work in progress)
More recently, we’ve been working with our first Japanese client.
Suki is a platform dedicated to giving visibility to Japanese artisans. Once again, the identity was designed by Erik Zárraga, and our role was to define how that identity moves.
This system is quieter. More deliberate. Less expressive, more intentional.
Same process. Very different outcome.
How we build motion systems
This process isn’t about inventing motion. It’s about discovery.
Before designing anything, we try to understand the brand as deeply as possible:
- Reading brand documentation
- Reviewing existing products
- Interviewing people inside the company
During these conversations, I often use a simple mental exercise.
If this brand were a person, how would they move?
Are they nervous or composed?
Playful or restrained?
Precise or expressive?
Sometimes I even reference public figures or characters to clarify energy and rhythm. Not to be literal, but to align intuition across the room.
Once we understand the personality, we define:
- Motion principles (the foundation)
- Timing and easing (how energy flows)
- Constraints (what motion should never do)
Only then do we move into templates and production tools.
Templates come last. Principles come first.
A final thought
Good motion design doesn’t shout.
It behaves.
A motion system isn’t there to impress.
It’s there to support teams, clarify decisions, and protect identity over time.
If you’re a digital designer working on products, brands, or platforms, motion isn’t an extra layer. It’s part of the system whether you define it or not.
The question is simply:
Are you designing motion assets, or motion behaviour?
If this resonates, feel free to forward it to someone on your team who works with motion, interaction, or product design.