Make with Notion 2025
Created interstitials for the annual Make with Notion conference, built the team's typer tool, and produced the Notion 3.0 keynote.
MWN typer tool
Building the Make with Notion typer
We started by screen-recording a web-based typer. That led us to rebuild it in After Effects, where pasted Figma copy becomes on-brand motion with zero keyframes.
Why screen recording stopped working
At the start of Make with Notion 2025 production, we were using a web-based typer and recording the result. It looked great, but the recording flattened everything. Any post-production change meant recording the full animation again.
The fix was to rebuild the idea natively in After Effects. The brief was simple: anyone on the team should be able to paste text from Figma and render an on-brand typer without setting a single keyframe.
The system begins with type
Brand designer Lorin Schaecher created a custom shape font based on Inter. Each character maps to a distinct shape, such as a triangle for a or a circle for o. Because those shapes live in an actual font, they inherit the kerning and spacing behavior we already rely on. A line can move between Inter and the shape font without its composition falling apart.
Lorin also drew alternate orientations for the shapes, which let us match the Figma designs more closely. Because the system was still text, expressions could animate, color, and replace shapes one character at a time.
Two ways through the template
EasyType covers the common case. It contains one text layer: paste the copy, and the animation is ready to render.
TyperOn is for designs that need a shape to linger after the rest of the line resolves. It separates the setup into two layers. Text holds the final design, whileShapes handles the opening motion. On its own, the Text layer is a straightforward typewriter. The Shapes layer adds the shape, rotation, and transition into each letter.
To leave a shape behind, we style that character with the shape font on the Text layer, then copy the full styled line to the Shapes layer and set that layer in the shape font. Kerning may need a small adjustment to match the design. This manual sync is a necessary workaround. After Effects expressions can link sourceText in a simple setup, but they cannot transfer per-character styles such as font and color between layers.
Controls, not timelines
Nobody using the template needs to open its animators or expressions. The working controls live on the Text layer in Effect Controls.
- Color overrides target a character by index. Entering
5inYellow Index, for example, turns the fifth character yellow. Any overridden character starts wiggling after it appears, following the same behavior used across the event identity. - Wiggle Amount and Wiggle Seed change the intensity and variation of lingering shapes.
- Typing Speed and Animation Delay control the pace of the line and the handoff from shape to letter.
It behaves more like a small plugin than an animation template. The controls a designer needs are all in one place.
What the expressions automate
Color without hand assignment
Last year's animations cycled each letter through four brand colors. A modulo expression checks the character index and assigns the right color. For blue, (textIndex - 1) % 4 == 1 catches characters 2, 6, 10, and so on. A longer sentence still follows the same color rhythm with no extra setup.
One typing speed for every line
Instead of stretching keyframes, the expression calculates the duration from the copy length and a characters-per-second control. It also starts at the layer's in point, so multiple instances can be staggered freely in a timeline.
var charsPerSecond = 15;
var startTime = inPoint;
var duration = text.sourceText.length / charsPerSecond;
var animEndTime = startTime + duration;A stop-motion wiggle
A posterizeTime expression makes After Effects evaluate the wiggle at 12 frames per second. The movement stays random, but it lands with a choppy, stylized stop-motion feel.
Type on was only half the transition
We later added a Type Off mode that sends text back into shapes from left to right. Pairing Type On with Type Off lets one sentence become the next without cutting to white. The tool is still evolving as we use it, and Lorin has continued expanding the shape font alongside it.
Now, when copy or timing changes, we can update the composition instead of recording the whole sequence again.
Shape playground
Click or tap anywhere to drop a shape. Right-click to reset.