Work / Featured
Unite 2022: an hour of keynote motion in two weeks
Team
Three motion designers across Vancouver, Montreal and San Francisco
I led
Directed the keynote's motion package
Decision I owned
Build motion toolkits, not one-off segments
Context
Design and animate the motion elements for an hour-long keynote presentation with multiple presenters at Unite 2022, played live. Two weeks, a team spread across three cities and time zones, and a date that could not move.
The problem
- 01Two weeks to build a full set of motion elements for an hour of stage time.
- 02A remote team across Vancouver, Montreal and San Francisco, working in parallel on segments that had to look like one presentation.
- 03Playback at a live real-time event, where there is no second take.
What I did
01
Collaborate in Figma, finish in After Effects
The team used Figma as the shared design surface so three cities could work on the same material at once, then moved into After Effects for animation. Getting that handoff clean was most of the battle.
02
Build motion toolkits, not one-off segments
Rather than animating each presenter's segment from zero, I built toolkits the team could work from. That is what made the two-week deadline survivable with contributors working in parallel.
03
Direct rather than produce
The job shifted from making the work to directing motion designers making it, in a genuinely hectic environment. Keeping the standard consistent across contributors was the real deliverable.
More footage
Result
- 01An hour-long keynote that read as one piece despite parallel authorship in three cities.
- 02A documented Figma to After Effects practice that outlived the event.
- 03Established best practice at Unity for motion toolkits and for directing designers on live real-time events.
