Motion graphics, such as program openings or graphic demonstrations within a television program, require the designer to choreograph space and time. Images, narration, movement, sound and music are woven into a multisensory communication.

Chris Pullman at WGBH draws an analogy between creating a magazine with its cover, table of contents, letters to the editor, and articles, to that of a television program like Columbus and the Age of Discovery. In both cases, the designer must find a visual vocabulary to provide common visual features. Columbus opens slowly and smoothly, establishing a time and a place. A ship rocking on the waves becomes a kind of “wallpaper” on which to show credits. The opening is a reference to what happened—it speaks of ships, ocean, New World, Earth—without actually telling the story.

In contrast, the computer-graphic map sequences are technical animation and a critical part of the storytelling. Was Columbus correct in his vision of the landmass west of Europe? Something was there, but what and how big? Was it the Asian landmass Columbus had promised to find? In 1516, Magellan sailed around the Americas by rounding Cape Horn-and found 5,000 more miles of sea travel to Japan! Columbus had made a colossal miscalculation.

The designer needed to visualize this error. Authentic ancient maps established the perspective of the past; computer animation provided the story as we understand it today and extended the viewer's perspective with a three-dimensional presentation. Pullman created a 3-D database with light source and ocean detail for this fifty-seven-second sequence. “The move was designed to follow the retreating edge of darkness, as the sun revealed the vastness of the Pacific Ocean and the delicate track of Magellan's expedition snaked west. As the Pacific finally fills the whole frame, the music, narration, and camera work conspire to create that one goose-bump moment. In video, choreography, not composition, is the essential skill.”