Lower thirds and motion graphics: how to add them to a video

What is a lower third in video?

A lower third is a graphic in the bottom third of the frame that tells the viewer who is talking: a name, and below it a role, a title or a place. News uses them for every new face, documentaries for every interviewee, and YouTube channels for guests and for a host's handle.

They sit low because that is where the picture is usually emptiest. A talking head fills the middle and top of the frame with a face, so the lower third goes underneath, to one side, without covering the person.

What should a lower third include?

Two lines at most: the name on top, larger and heavier, and one short line below. Anything longer is no longer a lower third; it is a paragraph the viewer has to stop and read.

Show it when the person first speaks, keep it up long enough to read twice, then let it go. Do not bring it back every time they appear. For a podcast or interview with several guests, one lower third at each speaker's first turn is the convention, and it is what Sharpy does when it edits a video podcast.

How do you make a lower third in Sharpy?

1. Open the graphics shelf in the window and choose a lower third. The placing sheet plays it over the frame at the playhead with the words you have given so far.
2. Fill in the words. Each template names its slots, such as {name}, {role} and {title}. A template with an empty slot is refused rather than drawing "{name}" at your audience.
3. Let the brand kit dress it. The lower third takes your kit's ink, accent and typeface.
4. Place it and time it. It lands as a clip on a Graphics track, placed by its own shape on the finished frame for its own length, so you can move it, key it, fade it or give it effects like any clip.
5. Check the render's warnings. Sharpy warns when on-screen text leaves the title-safe area (90% of the frame) and when text is on screen for less time than it takes to read.

Or ask the agent from Claude or Codex: "name Amara as head baker when she first speaks". It checks the graphic's name against the shelf and your words against the template before anything is stored.

A placed graphic remembers its recipe, so you can correct a misspelt name in place and it keeps its position, timing and movement. It is drawn again at the export size, so a 4K export of a 1080 edit gets sharp 4K type.

What motion graphics are on the shelf?

Sharpy's own template shelf is drawn from shapes, icons and type, in the piece's own colours, so nothing needs licensing or fetching: lower thirds, a name card, a title card, a chapter card, a quote card, a stat card, a callout, a highlight box, a progress bar, a subscribe bug, a call-to-action button, a badge, a tick list, an end card, a ticker, an arrow, an underline, a speech bubble and a numbered key point.

Beside them sit graphics made by motion designers, with real typography, masks, gradients, blurs and 3D moves. Every word slot is filled with your words, so a designer's sample name never reaches your audience.

Charts are drawn from words. Give a bar chart "Jan 12; Feb 18; Mar 25" and each bar grows from the baseline in turn, its value counting up; bars below zero grow down from a zero line. Numbers count in the format you write, {#,###} or {#.#}, never a guess from your Mac's region, because 1,200 and 1.200 are different numbers in different places. A map lights your states or countries from your data, and a route can be given by name, such as "New York; Paris". A place that is several places, "there are three Londons", is asked about, not guessed.

Code blocks show your own code in nineteen languages and eleven colour themes, and tokens that stay between two versions move rather than vanish, which is what a coding tutorial needs. How to make a tutorial video on a Mac puts them to work.

How do you keep graphics on brand?

Keep a brand kit once: logos for light and dark backgrounds, colours and fonts. Every graphic placed with it takes them, a lower third's ink, accent and face, a designer graphic's background and accents by role. You edit the kit's colours, typefaces and logos in the inspector, from the graphics shelf.

The logo is chosen by contrast with the picture behind it: the light logo over a dark take, the dark one over a bright one. Where no logo would read, nothing is laid and Sharpy names the missing version. Change a kit colour and Sharpy asks before it redraws the graphics that took it, leaving anything you set by hand.

When a piece names a product, the graphic shows that product's own mark rather than a placeholder: 3,258 brands' logos ship inside Sharpy, from Simple Icons and Wikimedia Commons, each used with its brand's own rules. Icons come from Phosphor Icons, 1,530 of them in five weights, published under the MIT licence.

Can you use your own After Effects templates?

Yes. A Motion Graphics template (.mogrt) is the package After Effects exports for Premiere Pro editors to fill in. Sharpy opens it without Adobe: it reads the template's size, length and every control, shows the controls as a form, and draws it itself. Before drawing, it compares its own frame with the thumbnail the template was made with and tells you whether it matches. It sets words in the exact font release the template used, with tracking and justified lines as After Effects saved them.

Plain After Effects projects (.aep) draw too. Anything Sharpy has not built, such as certain effects or a font your Mac lacks, is refused by name, with what fetches a free font. Sharpy searches Mixkit's free templates and fetches the ones you choose onto your own template shelf.

Where should graphics go on the frame?

• Inside title safe. Keep text inside the middle 90% of the frame, where every screen shows it. Sharpy warns when it strays.
• Clear of the apps' buttons. On a vertical piece, the words inside a graphic are held clear of TikTok's and Reels' own buttons, as captions are.
• Off faces. Sharpy reads words back after placing them and refuses a spot on a face or with too little contrast, offering one where they read.
• Sized by their own shape. A graphic taller than the frame is shrunk to fit, and a lower third changed into a stat card is refused rather than drawing an empty slot.

Graphics can carry sound too. Sharpy reads where a graphic moves fastest, for a whoosh, and where it lands, for an impact, and lays each sound by its loudest moment on that instant. Sound effects for video covers that craft.

Before this lesson: video transitions and effects. Next: text animation and titles.

Frequently asked questions

01

What is a lower third in video?

A graphic in the bottom part of the frame that names the person speaking, usually with their role on a second line.

02

How do you make a lower third?

Pick a lower third template, type the name and role, set it in your brand's colours and fonts, and show it when the person first speaks. In Sharpy the shelf, the brand kit and the safe-area checks do most of that for you.

03

What should a lower third include?

A name and one short line about why the person matters. Keep it to two lines.

04

Are lower thirds templates free to use in Sharpy?

Yes. The shelf's templates and designer graphics are part of the one plan, drawn on your Mac, and Mixkit's free templates come with Mixkit's own free licence.

05

Does Sharpy add logos or credits to my picture?

Only what you place. Credits for music, sound and footage go into a file for the video's description, never onto the picture.

Sources

Checked on 18 October 2026.

• Adobe: Motion Graphics templates (.mogrt)
• Mixkit: free Premiere Pro and After Effects templates
• Mixkit: licence terms
• Phosphor Icons (MIT)
• Simple Icons (CC0), the source of brand marks found by name
• Wikimedia Commons, for brand marks in the public domain
• Natural Earth, the public-domain map data behind the map of Spain
• Sharpy credits