Motion graphics are almost always designed on a monitor an arm's length away, and frequently displayed on a screen many times larger, seen from many times further back.
Those are different viewing conditions, and content that ignores the difference reliably disappoints on install day.
Type weight has to increase
Thin and light typefaces are popular in brand guidelines and they are the first thing to fail at scale. Across a hall, at an angle, on an LED panel with visible pixel structure, a hairline weight breaks up into something that reads as blurry rather than elegant.
The brand does not break if a heavier weight is used on screen. What breaks the brand is type nobody can read.
Contrast needs more margin than you think
Subtle tonal relationships - mid grey on dark grey, a tint barely separated from its background - depend on controlled viewing conditions.
Exhibition halls do not have controlled viewing conditions. Ambient lighting, competing screens and viewing angle all compress the range you designed with. Contrast that feels slightly heavy-handed on a monitor tends to be about right in the hall.
Movement speed should drop
This is the least intuitive one. A pan or transition that feels snappy on a small screen can feel violent at scale, because the eye is travelling a much greater physical distance to follow it.
Large-format motion generally wants slower moves, longer holds and fewer of them. The content has more physical presence, so it needs less movement to hold attention - and viewers arrive mid-loop, needing a beat to orient before anything changes.
Hold times must account for arrival
On a website, a viewer starts at the beginning. On a wall, they arrive whenever they arrive - usually mid-sequence.
Every key frame therefore needs to hold long enough to be read by someone who has just walked up. A message that appears for a second and a half will be missed by most of the people it was written for.
Check it at size before sign-off
The cheapest safeguard is the one most often skipped: view the content at something approaching real scale before approving it.
Projecting it large, or standing back from the biggest screen available, catches type, contrast and pacing problems while they are still easy to fix. Discovering them during stand build, when the wall goes live for the first time, is a far more expensive place to learn.
This is the thinking behind our large-format motion graphics work - designing for the viewing distance rather than the monitor.