How we build motion systems (and why most products don't)

Motion design isn’t about animations. It’s about behaviour, consistency, and scale.

How we build motion systems in Bisuala

One of our favourite types of work is building motion systems.

It sounds sophisticated. In practice, it’s surprisingly rare.

Most digital products, brands, and platforms use motion every day but very few define how they move. Animations exist, transitions happen, interactions respond but there’s no shared logic behind them.

A motion system is how you turn motion from decoration into behaviour.

What is a motion system?

A motion system is a set of principles, rules, and reusable patterns that define how a brand or product moves.

Not just what animates, but:

When motion appears
Why it exists
How it behaves over time

It creates consistency across products, platforms, and teams, even as more people contribute to the work.

Large organisations like Uber, Google, or IBM have made their motion systems public. Not as a trend, but as infrastructure.

Motion systems help teams scale without losing clarity, tone, or intent.

A quick glance at our work

We’ve built motion systems for very different contexts:

Lawyers
Tech companies
Video art festivals
Artist collectives
Industrial manufacturers

The reason is almost always the same.

At some point, content production needs to scale. More formats, more platforms, more people involved. Without motion guidelines, things drift. Consistency erodes. Decisions slow down. Quality becomes subjective.

Tate Esq

Our first motion system was for Tate Esq, a legal content brand.

We were helping Stan, the founder, with motion design for his growing YouTube channel. The channel worked. The business impact was real. The next challenge was scale.

Instead of animating everything manually forever, we designed:

Clear motion principles aligned with the brand
Reusable After Effects and Premiere templates
A system that allowed others to produce content without breaking consistency

The key work wasn’t the templates.
It was defining how the brand behaves in motion.

Tate Law — Motion System on Behance

Yourbana

Yourbana was a video art festival in Rome aimed at a young audience, sponsored by Mastercard and ATAC.

The identity, designed by Erik Zárraga and Angelica Barco, was bold, angular, and energetic. Our role was to translate that energy into motion.

We defined three motion principles and applied them consistently across:

Video assets
Social content
Festival materials

The result felt alive without feeling chaotic.

Yourbana Case Study

The project was later featured in Brands in Motion.

Suki (work in progress)

More recently, we’ve been working with our first Japanese client.

Suki is a platform dedicated to giving visibility to Japanese artisans. Once again, the identity was designed by Erik Zárraga, and our role was to define how that identity moves.

This system is quieter. More deliberate. Less expressive, more intentional.

Same process. Very different outcome.

Suki on Instagram

How we build motion systems

This process isn’t about inventing motion. It’s about discovery.

Before designing anything, we try to understand the brand as deeply as possible:

Reading brand documentation
Reviewing existing products
Interviewing people inside the company

During these conversations, I often use a simple mental exercise.

If this brand were a person, how would they move?

Are they nervous or composed?
Playful or restrained?
Precise or expressive?

Sometimes I even reference public figures or characters to clarify energy and rhythm. Not to be literal, but to align intuition across the room.

Once we understand the personality, we define:

Motion principles (the foundation)
Timing and easing (how energy flows)
Constraints (what motion should never do)

Only then do we move into templates and production tools.

Templates come last. Principles come first.

A final thought

Good motion design doesn’t shout.
It behaves.

A motion system isn’t there to impress.
It’s there to support teams, clarify decisions, and protect identity over time.

If you’re a digital designer working on products, brands, or platforms, motion isn’t an extra layer. It’s part of the system whether you define it or not.

The question is simply:
Are you designing motion assets, or motion behaviour?