Typography in Motion

Animate text expressively: splitting copy into lines/words/characters, staggering reveals, masking, blurring, morphing weight, and running text along a path. Produces runnable code for the web (CSS, GSAP, Framer Motion) and video (Remotion), plus an After Effects expression approach.

When to use

• Headline / tagline entrances and animated title cards.
• Lyric videos, caption/subtitle reveals, kinetic-typography pieces.
• Variable-font animation (weight, width, slant, optical size).
• Text-on-path, text stroke draw-on, and per-character morph effects.

Core workflow

1. Get static typography right first

Motion cannot rescue bad type. Before animating, lock line-height (1.1-1.2 for display headlines, 1.4-1.6 for body), tracking (tighten display by -1% to -3%, e.g. letter-spacing: -0.02em), alignment, and weight. Then split and animate.

2. Choose split granularity

• By line — calmest, most premium; best for multi-line paragraphs and elegant headlines.
• By word — energetic, good for taglines and lyric hits.
• By character — most kinetic/playful; risk of feeling busy on long copy. Reserve for short strings.

Tools: SplitType or GSAP SplitText on the web; .split('') / .split(' ') plus interpolate in Remotion; motion staggered children in Framer Motion.

Critical accessibility note: splitting into per-character spans destroys the text for screen readers and breaks copy-paste. Always set aria-label on the container with the full string and aria-hidden="true" on the split fragments.

3. Apply a reveal technique

The four workhorse reveals:

• Mask / clip reveal (most robust) — wrap each line in overflow: hidden; animate the child from translateY(100%) to 0. The text wipes up from a hidden baseline. No blur artifacts, GPU-cheap, the industry-standard headline reveal.
• Blur-in — animate filter: blur(12px) -> blur(0) with opacity 0 -> 1. Soft, premium, "focus-pull" feel. Costlier to render; keep blur radius modest and prefer short durations.
• Clip-path wipe — animate clip-path: inset(0 100% 0 0) to inset(0 0 0 0) for a directional reveal without moving the glyphs.
• Character stagger — split to chars, fade/translate each with a 20-40ms offset.

4. Apply principle-correct timing

Inline essentials (so this skill stands alone):

• Enter with ease-out: cubic-bezier(0.16, 1, 0.3, 1) (easeOutExpo) feels premium.
• Per-fragment duration 400-600ms.
• Stagger: lines 60-100ms, words 40-70ms, characters 20-40ms apart.
• Cap total reveal near ~800ms; for long strings, reduce per-char offset or switch to word/line granularity.

5. Mask-reveal, copy-paste (vanilla CSS + JS line split)

<h1 class="reveal" aria-label="Designed for motion">Designed for motion</h1>

.reveal .line { overflow: hidden; }
.reveal .line > span {
  display: inline-block;
  transform: translateY(110%);
  animation: rise 0.6s cubic-bezier(0.16, 1, 0.3, 1) forwards;
}
.reveal .line:nth-child(2) > span { animation-delay: 0.08s; }
.reveal .line:nth-child(3) > span { animation-delay: 0.16s; }
@keyframes rise { to { transform: translateY(0); } }

6. Variable-font weight animation

@keyframes thicken {
  from { font-variation-settings: "wght" 200; }
  to   { font-variation-settings: "wght" 800; }
}
.headline {
  font-family: "Inter var", sans-serif;
  animation: thicken 0.8s cubic-bezier(0.65, 0, 0.35, 1) forwards;
}

Animate font-variation-settings (covers any axis: wght, wdth, slnt, opsz, plus custom axes), not font-weight, to hit non-standard values and to interpolate smoothly. Confirm the loaded font is actually a variable font and the axis range (e.g. wght 100-900) before animating, or the value clamps silently.

Deliver & verify (standalone HTML)

Packaged helper (scripts/): scripts/seek-shot.sh anim.html 0 1.5 3 freezes the ?t=N harness and screenshots each moment; scripts/contact-sheet.sh sheet.png frame-*.png tiles them for one-glance review. See scripts/README.md.

For a web text reveal / kinetic-title deliverable, ship one .html file that opens directly in a browser — no build step. One file is the right tier for a headline, title card, or single reveal.

Output contract:

• One .html file: markup with aria-label on the container, the reveal in inline <style> (or one inline GSAP <script> from CDN).
• One animation driver — a CSS @keyframes reveal, or a single GSAP timeline; not both.
• Include the freeze harness below so any moment can be screenshotted deterministically.
• Split AFTER document.fonts.ready so line breaks are correct in the frozen frame.

Freeze harness — pin a frame for screenshots.

<script>
  const t = new URLSearchParams(location.search).get("t");
  if (t !== null) {
    // CSS @keyframes reveal:
    document.querySelectorAll(".reveal *").forEach(el => {
      el.style.animationDelay = (-parseFloat(t)) + "s";
      el.style.animationPlayState = "paused";
    });
    // GSAP timeline instead? → tl.pause(); tl.seek(parseFloat(t));
  }
  window.__ready = true;                                          // ready signal for headless wait
</script>

Verify loop — render → freeze → screenshot → check:

1. Open the file frozen at start / mid / end: …/type.html?t=0, ?t=<dur/2>, ?t=<dur>.
2. Screenshot each frozen frame.
3. Check fidelity (matches the brief) and artifacts — clipped glyphs/descenders, masks that don't fully hide the baseline, FOUC or wrong line breaks before fonts load, blur fringing.

npx playwright screenshot --wait-for-timeout=500 "file://$PWD/type.html?t=0.4" frame-mid.png

Before you finish:

1. Opens standalone in a browser — no console errors, no missing CDN/font.
2. One reveal driver; ?t=N freezes the exact frame correctly.
3. Screenshotted at start / mid / end — no clipped glyphs, no FOUC, line breaks correct.
4. prefers-reduced-motion honored (text shown in final state, no motion).
5. aria-label on the container; split fragments aria-hidden — copy and screen-reader text intact.

Quick reference

Text on a path (SVG)

<svg viewBox="0 0 600 200">
  <path id="curve" d="M20,150 Q300,20 580,150" fill="none" />
  <text font-size="42" fill="#fff">
    <textPath href="#curve" startOffset="0%">Follow the curve</textPath>
  </text>
</svg>

Animate the startOffset attribute (0% -> 100%) to scroll text along the path, or animate the path d to make text flow on a morphing curve.

Reference files

• references/reveal-recipes.md — copy-paste reveal cookbook: mask/blur/clip/char-stagger in CSS, GSAP SplitText timelines, Framer Motion staggered variants, Remotion per-character interpolation, variable-font keyframes, and a screen-reader-safe split helper.