⭐️ LEAP INTO OUR BIGGEST SALE EVER + SAVE UP TO 85% ➜

A Book Apart

Rachel Nabors Animation at Work

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

Buy the Ebook

Shop the Paperback

Our paperbacks are available where fine books are sold globally, including these retailers:

Our books can also be found on Amazon, but please consider supporting local and independent resellers.

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

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
Rachel Nabors

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.

Product Details

  • ISBN: 978-1-937557-59-1
  • Paperback: 80 pages
  • Published: Aug 22, 2017

Part of
a Pack!