Text animation is an essential part of motion design that can grab attention, guide your viewers’ eye, or help tell your story. Whether you're creating short social videos, corporate motion graphics, or prime-time commercials, adding custom animated text will make your work feel polished and professional.

Diving into animation can feel daunting, but this guide will walk you through everything you need to know to create your first text animation, includingformatting your text in After Effects and adding movement usingkeyframe animation so that you can create yourlower thirds and other graphics.

To kick off your learning, these 6 tutorials will help you get started with text animation to grab attention and move your story forward.

This first video will show you the basics ofadding and animating text in After Effects, including changing the style of your text and adding motion in your composition.

Continue with this series to learn about different kinds of text animation.

• Creating and editing text layers

• Learn how to formatcharacter-specific styles , like font and kerning, andparagraph-specific styles like justification or spacing.

• See the details on available presets and what text properties you can animate

• Find inspiration with theseexamples and resources for text animation

• Adding motion to your designs is just one part of the motion design puzzle.Design principles like alignment, information hierarchy, contrast, and balance will improve the impact of your motion designs. Use these resources to deepen your design knowledge.

• An introduction to kerning

• Picking the right font: Serif vs. san serif

• Demystifying graphic design with 10 tips for non-designers

• Understanding the 12 principles of animation