Best Practices: Faster graphics workflows

Every channel, show, series, or film has its own visual styling and graphics. With the explosion of video, it has never mattered more that content has a consistent appearance.

Efficient graphics workflows can have a massive impact on post-production timescales. Broadcasters and large post-production facilities have established workflows to connect graphics and editorial teams. On the other end of the content creation spectrum, filmmakers may be responsible for both developing assets and incorporating them into the finished project.

Motion Graphics templates accelerate the graphics workflow from production in the art department through implementation in editorial, streamlining iteration and quality control. 

Incidentally, the following three examples provide an interesting history of how digital production workflows have evolved.

Copy and paste are the most basic ways that digital workflows save time. For video, you can simply copy a design element on the Timeline, paste it into a new location and then modify the new instance. This is much faster than creating each graphic from scratch, but it is still manual work and doesn’t scale as efficiently as new techniques.

Dynamic Link is much more powerful, allowing you to place a “live” After Effects composition in the Premiere Pro Timeline. Editors use this both for animated graphics and visual effects shots. Dynamic Link allows you to finesse those shots in the context of your edit. You don’t have to bake anything. If performance suffers because you have numerous complex compositions, you can Render and Replace in Premiere Pro, which give you better editing performance while maintaining instant access to the original composition in After Effects.

Motion Graphics templates (.mogrts) allow you to extend this process exponentially. Think of mogrts as capsules containing both graphic design and animation, allowing editors to customize content within defined parameters. This enables fast editorial workflows while maintaining brand consistency. Whether you have expertise in After Effects, Motion Graphics templates allow you to “divide and conquer” so that in After Effects you can focus solely on design – and lock that down before moving the artwork on to editorial. In Premiere Pro, you can focus entirely on implementation. 

Motion Graphics templates are saved in your Creative Cloud libraries, so they are easy to organize and access for different projects. Sharing CC Libraries extends all of these benefits for teams, ensuring efficiency and quality control for whole teams. 

Downloads

This Best Practice guide includes assets you can download, including Motion Graphics templates and the original After Effect project they were created from. The downloads include a PDF explaining how they were built. If you are interested, or experienced, in After Effects, the PDF helps you explore the design and authoring process.

How Motion Graphics templates save time

A study commissioned by Adobe Stock showed that Motion Graphics templates speed up graphics workflows by 350% but the real savings can be greater, depending on how you use them.

Working with these Motion Graphics templates in Premiere Pro

We have created example projects for this Best Practices guide which you can download here.

There are four Motion Graphics templates (.mogrts) in the folder and one CSV file.

• Sports Title.MOGRT - This example MOGRT has changeable text and a slider to change the Color Scheme.
• Sports End Credits.MOGRT - This example MOGRT has changeable text and a slider to change the Color Scheme.
• Sports Lower Third.MOGRT - This example MOGRT has changeable text, color (as above), but also has a slider to change the sport icon in the lower left corner.
• Sports Lower Third (CSV).MOGRT - This example MOGRT needs a CSV (Comma Separated Values) file, which is included. The slider permits picking which combination of athlete/sport/icon/color.

To install these MOGRTS, drag them from your downloads folder to the Essential Graphics Panel in Premiere Pro. 

Working with the original composition in After Effects

The Adobe After Effects project has the necessary comps and other assets to build the above MOGRTS.

The inclusion of the AE project was specifically to give designers examples of how to build MOGRTS. Feel free to disassemble and use (where applicable) the expressions in your own projects.

There is a PDF called MOGRT Documentation that goes in detail to how each were constructed.

For more detailed information, download Making Mogrts by Jarle Leirpoll.

Tips for authoring Motion Graphics templates

Learn more about Motion Graphics templates

For more info, download Making Mogrts by Jarle Leirpoll. This free eBook comes courtesy of Adobe Stock and provides detailed guidance and even snippets of code for authoring and optimizing Motion Graphics templates in After Effects.

About these Best Practice guides

Adobe helps you get to the finish line faster. See our Best Practice guides for video editing and production.

Contributors

• Jarle Leirpoll is a filmmaker, editor, and Master trainer based in Norway. He's also the author of The Cool Stuff in Premiere Pro.
• Ian Robson is a broadcast motion designer, and regular Adobe MAX trainer. Ian is based in Silverthorne, Colorado
• Jeff Greenberg is a consultant, master trainer, and author of Adobe Premiere Pro Studio Techniques
• Maxim Jago is a Paris-based filmmaker, master trainer, and author of Premiere Pro Classroom in a Book.
• Alex Macleod is a production professional, broadcasting consultant, and owner of Media City Training in the UK.
• Joe Newcombe is head of sales and marketing at Support Partners, a system integrator for broadcasters and post-production facilities. He’s based in the UK.