Hasta La Motion!

Do you ever wonder how many people actually work in the Motion Graphic Design business? Do you ever think about where they might live and work? Do you ever wonder what kind of salaries they make? How they charge their clients? How many projects they do a year? If they do work in advertising, short films, visual effects, or music videos? And what kind of software they use?

We do.

That’s why we’ve created the 2009 Motion Graphic Design Census, the first-ever salary survey for professionals in Motion Graphic Design, Animation, Visual Effects and Film-making. This survey is designed to count everyone in the industry—from owners to interns, producers, designers and animators. The online survey will be hosted at Motionographer for the month of December. We’ll then publish the results in 2010.

We plan on continuing the survey as a yearly effort in order to track salary, rates, and other relevant issues. We’d love to get the entire Motion Design community to participate, to give us a full and realistic overview of the entire profession.

Please follow the link and fill out your information, which will remain completely anonymous. Then sign up for our mailing list to get the results of the survey in 2010.

If you’re wondering why you should spend 10 minutes or less filling this survey out, here are some reasons:

• The AIGA has never truly identified and defined our field of work in its annual salary surveys. It has always classified positions as entry level designer, designer, senior designer, art director, creative/design director, owner/partner/principal and solo designer – positions geared towards its base of print designers. This leaves out producers, animators, CG artists, storyboard artists, and quite a few other job types related to our industry. Other membership-based organizations like BDA/Promax or AICP also leave out whole segments of our colleagues and do not make their information accessible to the public.

• We should no longer be seen as a “young” industry. Some of the leading companies in our field have been in business for 10 years or more now. A salary survey is long overdue in our industry to gauge year-by-year the value companies place on full-time and freelance talent that they hire.

• By conducting this first-ever salary survey tailored to our industry, important data will be gathered that will give insight to individuals as to where they fit in this complex and always-changing industry and hopefully help them see more clearly the path they wish to take with their careers

• There are other relevant issues in our industry like unpaid pitches, spec work, work-for-hire agreements and other labor practices that we’d like to bring up as issues of concern to our community. Seeing who is affected by these issues is one of the first steps in addressing them.

• We’d simply like to quantify and count all the people who do what we do, and eventually help all of our colleagues explain to their parents what they actually do for a living.

The Motion Graphic Design Census was written and will be published by Bran Dougherty-Johnson and Jake Sargeant, two Motionographer authors who have worked several years in staff positions and now currently freelance within the industry.

Posted on Motionographer