Kinetic typography
Text animated in sync with speech or music so the words themselves perform the line. Lyric videos, title sequences, caption clips.
See it
What it is
Text as the performer, not the label. Words scale, snap, slide, and rotate in time with a voice or a track, so the typography carries the delivery: the pause, the emphasis, the punchline. The lineage runs from Saul Bass title sequences through Kyle Cooper's 'Se7en' main titles and the 'Fight Club' end credits, and lands today in lyric videos, podcast clips, and social captions.
Reach for it when there is audio worth reading along with and no footage worth watching: a great quote, a hook, a talking-head clip on a muted feed. Practical build: cut the audio first, mark every stressed syllable, then time word-in points to those marks. Animate position and scale with a fast ease-out (150 to 250ms), and let the word rest. Rest is the whole effect.
Gotcha: animating every word turns it into noise. Pick the two or three words per line that carry meaning and let the rest appear plainly. And check legibility at the size people watch: if a word is on screen for six frames while moving, nobody read it. Hold each key phrase at rest for at least half a second.
Ask AI for it
Create kinetic typography for this voiceover: bold condensed sans, white on near-black, centered and inside the title-safe area. Reveal the script word by word timed to the audio waveform, each word easing in over 180ms with a small scale-up (0.9 to 1) and slight upward offset. Emphasize one or two stressed words per line with a larger size and an accent color, hold each full phrase on screen for at least 600ms, then cut hard to the next phrase. No word stays in motion while it is meant to be read.