S6:E5 Losing Our Center (w/ Ryan Summers)

But really the first place that I want to start is what we just started talking about before we started recording.

I was about to go into the glory days of Vimeo and I just, my heavily curated liked videos I would go to all the time.

I just, I don't know, to me that was the center of it all.

What do you think happened?

I mean, this is one of my biggest disappointments about just our, I don't even know if I call it industry anymore, but our field for motion design is that there's no center anymore.

There's no gravity holding everything together.

In some ways, that's good because I think we, whatever this means, we hit peak MoGraph famous a couple years ago, and I don't think that was very healthy.

But I also feel like we've...

I'm old enough to remember when it was MoGraph, like motion graphics, and then we turned it into motion design when colleges started teaching it and needed a name and had curriculums.

But I've said this so many times, but I have been very fearful that we've calcified around motion design are these three things, and this one character design style, and After Effects into Cinema 4D and that like, it just turned into like a recipe that you could kind of order off of a menu for clients.

And that's not what got me excited about motion graphics.

I came from wanting to be a character animator and kind of danced around for probably 10 years, everything other than motion design, and then kind of fell into it when I started at Imaginary Forces.

But that was what was so fun.

was like motion design is like an umbrella over everything, not a little niche subset in my mind.

It's almost more like a philosophy.

And stuff like Motionographer and Art of the Title and just Vimeo staff picks and all the things, the different people curating there, it felt like we at least had a common language and a place where we were figuring out what the next conversational step was.

And even when Twitter or X or whatever you want to call it, even when that was starting, that still felt like everyone's gathering kind of in the same places.

something would pop up and it would start a conversation everywhere.

And now it's like, I don't know how you all feel, but I feel like that's all just kind of been obliterated.

And there's just little micro conversations happening in 7,000 different places, which is good because some people may not feel comfortable, you know, participating in the larger stage can.

But I do think that there's something wrong about an industry that doesn't like celebrate itself and highlight, you know, new people coming up and also doesn't have a sense of history, there's danger there.

And I feel like we're kind of in that moment right now because of all the other factors as well.

It's starting to show that kind of the parts that are broken.

And I'm feeling I don't know how you all feel, but I'm feeling it acutely right now.

Just the parts of the industry or field that are are not working right now.