From Motion Plus Design, a nonprofit project setting out to create the first exhibition center dedicated to motion design in Paris, comes this wonderful short film on the history of the discipline, from its start right at the dawn of cinema, to its coming of age in the 1940s in the work of experimental artists like Oskar Fishinger and Norman McLaren, to its Golden Age in the 1950s and 60s with icons like Saul Bass and Maurice Binder, to its explosion into omnipresence after the digital revolution.

So where is the boundary between animated film and Motion Design? Although this boundary remains blurred, the distinction lies where traditional animated film features a story in which characters express themselves.”

(See also this 2-minute history of film title sequences.)

For more on the subject, see Jon Krasner’s exhaustive Motion Graphic Design: Applied History and Aesthetics. And for a true treat from the greatest motion designer of all time, you won’t go wrong with the highly anticipated definitive monograph Saul Bass: A Life in Film & Design, designed by Bass’s daughter Jennifer and written by renowned design historian Pat Kirkham.

via Coudal