How do you keep up with the latest trends and innovations in animation and transition timing on web design?

1 Why timing matters

Timing is the essence of animation and transition. It determines how fast, slow, smooth, or abrupt an element moves, changes, or appears on the screen. It also affects the mood, meaning, and message of the animation or transition. For example, a fast and bouncy animation can convey excitement, energy, or fun, while a slow and smooth transition can imply calmness, elegance, or sophistication. Timing can also create contrast, emphasis, or rhythm in your design, and guide the user's attention and expectations. Therefore, choosing the right timing for your animation or transition is crucial for creating a coherent and compelling web design.

4 How to use timing principles

Timing principles are guidelines or best practices that can help you create more natural and realistic animations and transitions. These principles were developed by Disney animators in the 1930s and remain popular today. To create tension, anticipation, or surprise in your animation or transition, you can use the anticipation principle to make an element shrink slightly before it grows, or move slightly back before it moves forward. The follow-through and overlapping action principle can be used to create realism, fluidity, or exaggeration in your animation or transition; for example, you can make an element bounce or sway after it lands, or make its parts move at different speeds or directions. Finally, the ease-in and ease-out principle can be used to create smoothness, naturalness, or emphasis in your animation or transition; for example, you can make an element start slowly and end fast, or start fast and end slowly.

5 How to learn from examples

One of the best ways to improve your animation and transition timing skills is to learn from examples. You can find many examples of web design animations and transitions on websites, blogs, portfolios, showcases, or galleries, such as Awwwards, Codrops, Dribbble, or CodePen. You can observe how different designers use timing functions, duration, delay, and timing principles to create various effects and styles. You can also inspect the code behind the examples and try to modify or recreate them yourself. This can help you understand how the timing parameters work and how they affect the outcome.