… for Apple Motion

Tip #1116: A Design Thought on Depth

Larry Jordan – LarryJordan.com

Sometimes a design element can help reinforce the illusion of depth.

In other tips, I used Y-axis rotation to create the illusion of depth; especially for text. However, sometimes adding a design element can help sell that illusion even more.

In the screen shot, the text was rotated 50° on the Y-axis. While this clearly creates the illusion that the text is receding into the screen, we can do more to emphasize this.

For example, in the screen shot, I added a line to reinforce this illusion in three ways:

1. The line is rotated at 50° on the Y-axis
2. The near edge of the line is wider than the far edge, which was done by manually dragging the control points that define the boundaries of the line to make the near edge slightly wider.
3. The line is darker than the text above it which makes the line seem like it is “going away” from the text.

No single technique will work the same for every effect, but using graphical elements to reinforce placement of text is often much better than just using the text by itself. And I thought this was a cool example to share with you.