Lesson 15 of 24
Text animation and titles: animated text that reads well
Text animation in Sharpy: titles with outlines, glow and gradients, entrances, exits and loops on exact curves, 3D letters, and words that read.
hopeengineer · Founder of Sharpy and Threadify18 October 2026 · 7 min read
The short answer
Good text animation moves words so they are easier to read, not harder: a clear typeface, a weight that holds up on a phone, an entrance that settles quickly, and enough time on screen to read. In Sharpy you set a title's look, outlines, shadow, box and glow together, fill it with a gradient, animate it with keys on exact curves, give it an exit or a loop, or raise it into 3D letters. Before any word is placed, Sharpy reads it back to make sure it can be read, on your Mac.
What is kinetic typography?
Kinetic typography is text that moves to carry meaning: words that arrive with the voice, grow on the stressed syllable, shake on a joke or slide away when the thought ends. Lyric videos, title sequences, explainer videos and short-form captions all use it.
It works when the movement does a job. A word that pops as it is said helps the viewer hear it. A title that tumbles for three seconds before it can be read only delays the point. Sharpy times reveals, holds and exits so the words can be read once they settle.
How do you animate text in a video?
With keyframes. A key sets where the words are, how big, how turned and how visible at one moment; the next key sets another; the curve between them decides how the move feels. In Sharpy:
- Add the words in the Text tab, or ask the agent: "put WHY IT MATTERS over the opening shot".
- Choose an entrance from the Text tab, or key the move yourself. Keys sit at a share of the words' own time on screen, so the move stays right if you lengthen the title.
- Pick a curve. Keys travel by named curves (easeOut, overshoot, straight) or by an exact cubic-bezier written as CSS writes it, such as Material Design's
cubic-bezier(0.2, 0, 0, 1), so a brand's motion spec can be matched exactly. - Add an exit or a loop. Exits are fade, slide-up, slide-down and pop, each as long as its entrance and speeding up as it goes. Loops play while the words stay: pulse, heartbeat, breathe, blink, bounce and swing, with an amount and a period, after the keyframes of Animate.css and Tailwind CSS.
- Let it blur. Words moved by keys are exposed with a 180-degree shutter, as film exposes a moving object, so a fast slide smears instead of stuttering.
A loop always plays whole periods and hands the words to their exit at rest, so nothing snaps. Nothing goes out and back more than three times a second, the flash limit in WCAG 2.3.1, and an exit with no time or a loop with no room for a whole period is refused, with the reason.
Kinetic type also works letter by letter: letters squash and stretch, and words animate as they are said and land in time with the voice. For captions that follow every spoken word, see animated captions.
How do you give a title its look?
Most strong titles are three or four layers drawn in a set order. Sharpy draws them the way design tools do: box, then shadow, then outline, then fill.
| Layer | What it does | When to use it |
|---|---|---|
| Fill | The letters' colour or gradient | Always |
| Outline | A stroke round each letter; several can stack, widest beneath | Words over a busy picture |
| Shadow | Colour, opacity, blur and direction | Lifting words off a similar background |
| Box | A backing with its own padding on each side, corners, border and shadow | Captions, lower thirds, anything that must read over anything |
| Glow | Light around the letters | Night scenes, neon, music videos |
Every size is a share of the type size, so a look is the same whether the title is small or huge. A box can also have its letters knocked out so the picture shows through.
Gradients fill text exactly as CSS writes them: linear, radial, conic or repeating. A gradient can span the whole line, each word, each letter, or the whole frame, so the words move through a gradient fixed to the picture. Stack gradient layers with blend modes such as multiply, screen, soft-light and luminosity and you get polished chrome titles.
Words can also float, follow a path, or become a matte: as a stencil the picture shows only through the letters, and as a silhouette the letters cut it away.
How do you make 3D text?
Two ways. Bevel and emboss raises letters from the picture or presses them into it, as in Photoshop: choose inner, outer, emboss, pillow or stroke, a smooth or chiselled technique, and light it from an angle and height with your own highlight and shadow colours.
3D text extrudes the letters back from their face with a chamfered front edge. The face, sides and chamfer each take their own finish, colour, how metallic, how rough, and the letters turn in space and catch light from the angle you set. Titles can also stand in 3D space with the edit's own camera moving round them.
How do you set type that reads on a phone?
Type setting is where most titles go wrong. The Text tab gives you the controls a typographer uses:
- Weight. Bold or heavier for titles. Variable fonts take any weight on their own axis: 25 of the 38 families on Sharpy's shelf take a weight, from Comfortaa's 300 to 700 to DM Sans's 100 to 1000.
- Tracking. Letter spacing. Leave it unset rather than at zero: zero switches off the font's own pair kerning, and "AV" stops tucking together.
- Leading. Line spacing. Tighten it for a two-line title so the lines read as one idea.
- Alignment and wrap width. The agent can set how wide the box the words wrap in is, as a share of the picture, for a title in a narrow column or a lower third kept to its side.
- Outline width for words with an outline.
A word wider than its box is sized down to fit rather than broken between letters, so a short, heavy title such as "MOVE" never comes out as "MOV" on one line and "E" on the next.
Unstyled text is set in Inter Bold, shipped inside Sharpy under the SIL Open Font License, so it may be used in a published video. Sharpy also bundles open families such as Archivo, Barlow Condensed, Caveat, Courier Prime, Geist and Geist Mono, Gelasio, League Gothic, Libre Baskerville, Libre Franklin, Recursive and Space Mono, for when your Mac lacks them. A typeface your Mac has not got is refused rather than quietly swapped for another, and a single-weight family says so instead of ignoring "bold".
Where should words go on the frame?
Where they can be read. Before Sharpy places words, it draws them into the edit and reads them back with its own text reader at a third, three fifths and five sixths of their time on screen, finding faces and measuring contrast. A word that is not read whole at every look, sits on a face, or falls under 3.0:1 contrast is refused, and Sharpy offers a place where it does read, tried from the top of the title-safe area down. Two pieces of text in one place are refused.
You stay in charge: when you say where the words go, they go there. On a test recording of a swaying person, a word placed across her head read as "B D" and was moved to where it read whole at 13.0:1.
Then the render warns about any text outside the title-safe area (90% of the frame) and any text up for less time than it takes to read. To put words deliberately behind a person, see how to put text behind a person in a video, the next lesson. The one before this was lower thirds and motion graphics.
Frequently asked questions
01What is kinetic typography?
Text that moves to carry meaning, timed to the voice or the music, as in lyric videos, title sequences and short-form captions.
02How do you animate text in a video?
Set keyframes for position, size, rotation and opacity, and choose the curve between them. In Sharpy you can also pick an entrance, an exit or a loop, or ask the agent in plain words.
03What font is best for video titles?
A clear sans-serif at a bold weight reads best on phones. Sharpy uses Inter Bold by default because it is clear at any size and licensed for published video.
04How long should text stay on screen?
Long enough to read it twice at a relaxed pace. Sharpy warns when any text is on screen for less time than it takes to read.
05Can I use my own fonts?
Yes, any font installed on your Mac. Sharpy refuses a face your Mac has not got rather than drawing a stand-in.
Sources
Checked on 18 October 2026.
Written by
hopeengineer
Software architect and founder of Sharpy and Threadify. Builds scalable systems and AI tools, and writes here about how Sharpy understands and edits video.
Sharpy opens on 1 November 2026.
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