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How This Dynamic Duo Is Disrupting The Motion Design Industry Motion design refers to the practice of incorporating movement into digital designs. It uses motion to guide a user's attention, convey meaning, and evoke emotions to make information more memorable.

By Vikash Jha

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K Minglani and Nattu Adnan, the founders of the motion design platform LottieFiles

Success or failure in the information age is largely determined by one thing: attention. Attention means engagement, and engagement leads to conversion. Brands that are able to capture their audience's attention stand out from their competition, making them more successful in the market. There are many different ways to go about capturing this attention. But, over the past few years, motion design has emerged as one of the most powerful tools businesses have at their disposal.

Motion design refers to the practice of incorporating movement into digital designs. It uses motion to guide a user's attention, convey meaning, and evoke emotions to make information more memorable. As a result, it is used almost everywhere, from apps and websites to ads and even video games.

But just because it's successful doesn't mean it's perfect. There is always room for it to be improved. This is the argument made by K Minglani and Nattu Adnan, the founders of the motion design platform LottieFiles.

LottieFiles and its founders

LottieFiles, having over 5 million users from over 250,000 companies to date, is a platform that 'takes away the complexity of motion design.' It was started in 2017 by K Minglani and Nattu Adnan, two entrepreneurs with impressive portfolios in the technology sector.

K Minglani is a serial entrepreneur who's passionate about building and scaling SaaS ventures through community & technology. Before LottieFiles, he co-founded Mindvalley Quests, a large ed-tech company with 300+ employees and 15 million learners worldwide.

He also co-founded a real estate Tech startup, homebuy360, that was later acquired. He started his career with corporate M&A and holds an MBA from INSEAD.

Nattu Adnan, on the other hand, is a serial product builder that has taken up many roles in different startups. He is a proud Maldivian, a product designer by day and a web developer by night. He has over 20 years of Tech and Design experience, and can usually be found at the center of several design communities.

K Minglani and Nattu Adnan have a longstanding friendship that predates LottieFiles. They actually started the platform as a weekend project to keep their friend group mentally simulated.

The group recognized that there was a problem with conventional motion design – it's complex. Implementing motion in design products is needlessly difficult. Furthermore, it takes a long time to become an excellent motion designer using traditional tools. Users typically have to go through years of learning to become excellent motion designers.

So, they had an idea to simplify things and make motion design more accessible. Over time, it became clear that this idea would be more useful beyond Saturday evening cafe meetings between friends. Therefore, they decided to explore it further and dedicate more time and resources.

Half a decade and a couple of funding rounds later, LottieFiles has grown into a full-fledged company with 100+ employees. It enjoys a worldwide user base of more than 5 million from over 250,000 companies to date.

How LottieFiles streamlines motion design

LottieFiles' founders believe in the effectiveness of motion design. It's a powerful tool that every business should use if they want to drive engagement and conversion.

This is because it uses visual elements and animation to convey meaning, mood, and narrative. That way, it tells the brand's story better, making it easier to evoke an emotional response from the audience. This emotional connection provides a strong foundation for building brand loyalty.

LottieFiles was founded with the mission of bringing motion to every website and app on the planet. Of course, this would require making motion design easy.

With this in mind, the platform has developed its own file format, Lottie. Lottie is an open-source animation file format that helps democratize motion design by flattening the learning curve.

How?

Lottie is a scriptable and interactive file format that can be manipulated at runtime. It is also smaller than other animation file formats; a Lottie file it's at least 89% smaller than a GIF of the same quality. According to LottieFiles, this makes Lottie animation 10x faster to ship and allows for 5x faster load speed on apps and websites.

LottieFiles, the platform, provides access to animations in the Lottie format. It features plugins and integrations that allow Lottie animations to be used with Canva, Figma, WordPress, Webflow, Adobe XD, and dozens of other popular designers and developer tools.

Users also have access to courses and tutorials designed to help them work on their motion design skills. This, according to the platform, has allowed even users with little motion design knowledge to use LottieFiles.

The future of LottieFiles

The founders of LottieFiles expect the platform to simplify workflow and collaboration even more as time goes on. They will also be adding more plugins and integrations to support more developer and designer tools and expanding their already massive digital asset library.

Lastly, the platform will continue its community education efforts through online webinars and in-person meetings with designers and developers passionate about design and motion.

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