How Long Should Text Stay on Screen? A Rule of Thumb From Our Motion Work

When a motion piece feels rushed, the cause is usually text. The animation is fine, the colours are fine, and yet the viewer is still reading the first line when the second one arrives. Time on screen is the part of type design that people forget, and it is the part we check most carefully.

Our starting rule is simple. Read the line aloud at a relaxed pace, then add roughly half as much again. A viewer who has never seen the project is reading for the first time, and they also need a moment to take in the image behind the words. If the line is five words, a second and a half is a floor, not a target.

Entrances and exits count as time on screen only partly. A fade or slide in that takes twelve frames is not readable while it is moving. We count the readable hold, the time when the text is still and fully visible, and plan that separately from the movement around it.

Hierarchy changes the numbers. A single bold phrase can be quick because it is a shape as much as a sentence. A line with a figure, a name or a date needs longer, because the eye has to stop and check it. Legal or small print is a different job entirely and often belongs in a held frame at the end.

Platform matters as well. On a phone with the sound off, a viewer cannot rewind casually, so we are more generous. In a loop on a screen at an event, the viewer may arrive halfway through, so key lines repeat or stay anchored.

The best test costs nothing. Show the cut to someone who has not seen the project and ask them to tell you what the text said. If they cannot, add frames. We have never regretted giving a line more time, and we have often regretted cutting it short.

This habit carries across everything we animate, including festive brand pieces like the Marriott logo work in our case studies.