Animation at Work, A Book Apart

foreword by Dan Mall

Animation isn’t merely decorative—it’s an invaluable tool for creating a better web.

Get this book

Please reach out to this book’s author to inquire about availability.

A Book Apart no longer sells or distributes books.

Animation isn’t merely decorative—it’s an invaluable tool for creating a better web. Start with science: by understanding the human visual processing system, you can design delightful animation that works to ease cognitive load. Rachel Nabors guides you through the anatomy of web animations, patterns, and communication decisions across teams. This book will prepare you to identify and prioritize opportunities to integrate animation into design systems for building better experiences.

Topics Covered

Human Perception and Animation
Patterns and Purpose
Anatomy of a Web Animation
Communicating Animation
Best Practices and Other Educated Guesses

Quote 1
Quote 2
Quote 3

If you can’t justify the responsible use of animation to yourself, your team, and your stakeholders, all the technical expertise in the world is useless. This book explains the “why” of animation so you can pursue the “how” with confidence and clarity.

Justin Cone

Cofounder of Motionographer

Previous Next

Rachel’s easygoing style makes learning the science of animation both accessible and approachable. Not so much a “how-to” as a “why-to,” Animation at Work is an invaluable resource for anyone working in the UI space.

Aaron Gustafson

Author of Adaptive Web Design

Previous Next

Animation is too often seen as an afterthought, a nice-to-have relegated to the last leg of the development cycle. Animation at Work teaches you not just how to create thoughtful animations, but how to do so in a way that is modular and scalable—essential knowledge for anyone working with design systems. It’s a clear and concise guide I didn’t know I needed.

Mina Markham

Staff engineer at Slack

Previous Next

About the Author

Rachel Nabors got into interaction development and web standards after an award-winning career in web comics. She’s worked with Mozilla, the W3C, and Microsoft, stewarding all things web animations from APIs, to browser tooling, to community. She put the “motion design” in design systems at Booking and Salesforce. Currently she works on documentation, learning resources, and community development on the React Core team at Facebook, keeping her close to her greatest loves: visual storytelling, helping people learn and thrive, and comp and rendering processes. Best of all: she still draws comics.