Core Purpose
The Michigan Daily’s Video section has five key motion graphics:
- Name Cards
- Location Tags
- Text Boxes
- Closed Captions
- Production Credits
This guide looks to lay the groundwork for the uniform creation of these basic graphics. The core design language has been borrowed from The New York Times’ shortform team, and adapted slightly to accommodate The Daily’s established fontset.
In time, the goal is to establish these uniform graphics as templates that are readily available for use in any major graphics engine or NLE, be it After Effects, Davinci Resolve, or Apple Motion. At present, this project has yet to be completed.
Design Standards
Name Cards
The power of this design is derived from its simplicity. It works in a two- or three-line layout, and scales horizontally to accommodate more or less text as needed. To maintain this simplicity, four-line layouts are not advisable. The design may be right- or left-aligned.
Usage: To introduce relevant characters seen within the video. This box should appear once and only once for each person speaking in the video.
Name Cards don’t necessarily need to appear with the speaker’s first appearance. In cases where the speaker is shown briefly in B-Roll or has an exceptionally short line before cutting to B-Roll, it can be acceptable to show a Name Card on second appearance.
When a Name Card is used, it must not be placed over multiple clips. That is, cutting to another shot or angle is not acceptable. The card must be entirely contained within one shot. To allow for this, some exceptions to animation standards are noted below.
For shortform “street interview” videos where many different students are shown speaking, it may not be feasible or worthwhile to name each speaker. In these cases, it is not necessary to add name cards for each person speaking, but rather only introduce the interviewers.
Text: The top line is Source Serif Pro SemiBold, while the bottom is Ballinger Regular All Caps (note that all caps size is 100%). With regard to sizing, assuming the top line is sized at 100%, the lower line(s) should be roughly 66%. For example, in the samples above I’ve set the top line to 450pt, and the bottom line to 300pt. Exact font sizes will vary depending on the project’s dimensions. For content-related text notes, refer to the style guide.
Padding & Placement: When placing Name Cards, avoid blocking faces or other such critical details. It is usually best practice to place elements in the lower half of the frame, but this is not a universal requirement and some discretion is necessary.
As with all on-screen elements, it is also critical to be aware of a social platform’s UI elements when placing Name Cards. If posting to Instagram or TikTok, it’s best to use left-aligned card variants to accommodate the like and share buttons placed on the lower right side of their respective interfaces.
Name Cards should be placed on their own, with mind given to maintaining clear space on all sides. Cards should not be accompanied with drop shadows, outlines, embossings, or any other such elements which may distract from the card’s content. Very occasional exceptions can be made to allow for a drop shadow, but these should only be in cases of a uniform, near-white background content.
Name Cards should be sized uniformly throughout the course of a video, but they may vary slightly in size between videos as needed, so long as they remain easily readable from a normal viewing distance.
Within a card, text should be padded uniformly on all sides, where 1u = one upper-line-size space. Some margin for error is acceptable so long as the padding is uniform on all sides. This same 1u padding guideline applies when placing the element on a clip– it must have the same spacing from the edge of the screen as the text has from the edge of the card.
Animation: The design uses a simple swipe-in design. For notes on how to best achieve this effect, refer to the “Creation” section below.
Card backgrounds should build in over the course of 10-20 frames on a 30fps timeline. Text lines should animate over the same duration as the background, but be delayed 4-8 frames after the start of the background or previous text line animation begins. Build outs should have the same duration as the build in. When animating text lines in or out, use a character fade animation that moves in the same direction as the background. All movements should be given a sharp bezier or “S” curve to soften the beginnings and endings of the build.
Animating out is optional in some cases. When applied to shorter clips, time constraints can make it difficult to animate a proper build out. In these cases, it can be acceptable to cut directly to another shot with the Name Card clip ending alongside the previous shot.
Creation
Location Tags
Usage: To establish time and place for the content shown in an unobtrusive and uniform way.
Text:
Padding & Placement: A Location Tag’s external padding (that is, outside the card) should be the same as that of any Name Cards shown near the placement of the Location Tag. This applies even if the two elements do not appear on screen at the same time. If the Name Cards use an external padding amount that cannot be accommodated by the Location Tag, refer back to the 1u internal padding standard of the Name Card.
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Animation: Because of its placement at the start of the timeline, this element should not be animated. This is both in an effort of simplicity as well as to maintain a viewer’s attention on more important elements at the center of the frame. Despite a lack of animation, however, it remains important to place this element with intention within the timeline, hiding its in/out points alongside clip cuts.
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Creation
Text Boxes
Usage: To provide further context to a story without adding VoiceOver or A-Roll narration. This tool is frequently used by major news sources as a way to simplify a video’s production pipeline, but it can also be used alongside on-location reporting to house less important details of a story. They should not be used as a stand-in for closed captioning. That is, the content of a Text Box should not be read aloud.
When using Text Boxes, it is important to avoid writing overly-dense prose within a single block. As a general rule, a single text box should house no more than 4 lines of text or 2 sentences. If the content cannot be truncated to fit, split it into a second text box that builds in immediately after the first one builds out.
Text: A core goal of Text Boxes is for them to fit in seamlessly alongside Location Tags and Name Cards. To that end, Text Boxes use Source Serif Pro Semibold, and should be sized the same as the upper lines of Name Cards and Location Tags.
Padding & Placement: Text Boxes require slightly different padding guidelines from their Name Card counterparts. Again assuming 1u is equal to the height of a single text line, padding for these elements should be a uniform 0.5u on all sides.
Because each line in a Text Box is presented as a part of a larger paragraph, each requires unique positioning within its background box. To achieve the 0.5u outer padding without distorting line height, the text in the first line is shifted down within its background box, and the text in the last line is shifted up.
Animation:
Closed Captions
Usage: Usage of closed captions on any given video is at the discretion of the editorial team.
Text:
Padding & Placement:
Animation:
Production Credits
Usage:
Text:
Padding & Placement:
Animation:
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Final Product
When properly created in your graphics engine of choice, these graphics should help produce a uniform final product that maintains The Daily’s reputation for publishing world-class student journalism:
