◆ MOTION DESIGN ·
Motion Design for the World's Biggest Brands
Before I was "the resin guy," I was — and am again — a motion designer. Over more than seventeen years in creative work I've animated for a client list that still feels a little surreal to type out: Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Starbucks, Vitamin Water, Costco, Samsung, BlackBerry, Bell, AT&T, Chrysler, Ford, NASCAR, FedEx, Porter Airlines, Tim Hortons, and banks including TD, RBC, Scotiabank, and Bank of America.
Almost none of those brands hired me directly. That's the part people misunderstand about this industry.
How big-brand work actually happens
Big brands hire agencies; agencies hire specialists. My work reached those logos through shops like Publicis, Organic, Rocket Marketing, StoryStream, VMG, and Archmill House. The agency owns the strategy and the client relationship. The motion designer's job is to take a locked script, a brand book thick enough to stop a door, and a deadline that was optimistic before it reached you — and make something move in a way that feels inevitable.
It's a specific skill set that has surprisingly little to do with self-expression. The creative constraints are the job. A bank's animation can't feel playful in the wrong way. A soft drink's can't feel slow. NASCAR work has to feel fast even in the frames where nothing is technically moving. You learn to find the two degrees of freedom you've been given and make them count.
Hand-drawn, when everyone went digital
One thing that kept me in demand was keeping hand-drawn animation in the toolkit while the industry raced toward templates. I did hand-drawn work for brands like Molson, Bank of America, Scotiabank, Bank of Montreal, and Seneca. When every piece of motion on the internet starts to look like the same after-market plugin, the thing drawn by an actual human hand stands out again. Craft is cyclical. It always comes back.
What agency work taught me about business
Years later, when I founded ArtResin, people assumed I was starting from zero as a businessman. I wasn't — agency work is business training in disguise. You learn to estimate honestly, because a blown timeline burns a relationship worth years of work. You learn that the client's client is the real audience. You learn to present work in terms of the problem it solves, not the technique it shows off. And you learn revisions are not an insult; they're the process.
Every one of those lessons transferred directly into building a consumer brand — and they transfer right back now that I'm taking on select motion design and creative direction projects again: product launch animation, brand films, and explainer work that turns complicated material into something people actually understand.
The logos on the client list are fun. But the real asset from those seventeen years is quieter: knowing how to deliver, on brief, on time, at a level where the world's most protective brands trust you with their name in motion.
David Zak takes on a limited number of motion design and creative direction projects per quarter. See services, selected clients and availability at davidzak.com.