Zapier Product Animations for ZapConnect 2024

What is ZapConnect?

ZapConnect is Zapier’s flagship virtual user conference, where partners, customers, prospective users, industry experts, and thought leaders come together to explore the transformative power of automation. The event showcases how Zapier empowers individuals and businesses to unlock their potential with cutting-edge tools and solutions.

Full-Scope Animation for ZapConnect 2024

In 2024, I had the opportunity to create product animations for the opening keynote, Become Unstoppable with Automation for Everyone. Featuring Zapier leaders—including Co-founder and CEO Wade Foster, SVP of New Products Sheryl Soo, and VP of Product Chris Geoghegan—the keynote highlighted Zapier’s vision for scalable, customizable automation tailored to the unique needs of businesses.

I also contributed animations for the Zapier’s homepage, focusing on key platform features, and worked on the post-event recap video.

Over the years, ZapConnect has become known for its dynamic content and inspiring special guests. The 2022 event featured James Clear, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Atomic Habits, while the 2023 keynote included Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI. In 2024, the spotlight was on Dharmesh Shah, Co-founder and CTO of HubSpot.

Workflow & Collaboration

For the third year in a row, I had the pleasure of contributing to ZapConnect, collaborating with Julia Jaskólska, the art director and asset designer.

I’m proud to have earned Zapier’s trust over these years to bring their vision to life. It’s incredibly rewarding to see how our work continues to contribute to the success of ZapConnect.

Our experience from previous years allowed us to dive straight into the design and animation process, building on a solid foundation of collaboration. With tight deadlines and evolving requirements, staying adaptable and organized was essential. To streamline our asynchronous workflow, we implemented a simple system in Figma to visually track progress, ensuring we could manage changes efficiently and keep everyone aligned.

Animating Zapier Tables

A big part of my work for the 2024 ZapConnect event was animating Zapier Tables, a flexible database built for automation. I had to showcase features like adding new fields and columns, moving data around, and quickly taking action on leads or tasks.

The process involved a lot of exporting assets from Figma to After Effects and then reworking them to ensure everything was responsive. It took time and attention to detail, but the end result was totally worth it. The way the tables animate and flow feels really satisfying, and it’s rewarding to see how smoothly everything works in the final product.

“Thank you for your expertise, great ideas and hard work you put into this project! You absolutely killed it (as always)! 🙌”

JULIA JASKÓLSKA LEAD BRAND DESIGNER, ZAPIER

Morphing Transitions

In 2024, we focused on creating realistic product animations that reflected Zapier’s actual UI. The challenge was finding a way to make these animations stand out. I came up with the idea of using morphing transitions to add some visual energy. We decided to make this the main theme for the UI animations. Rather than relying on the typical fade-ins, I used morphing techniques to transition between inputs and windows. This made the UI elements smoothly transform—shrinking, growing, or shifting between different states. The result was dynamic and engaging, giving the animations a fresh and exciting feel.

Typewriter Effect for AI Prompts

When it comes to generating results with AI, the key is inputting the right prompt. For the text animations, I used my own custom tool, which gave me control over the typing speed and allowed me to add a text cursor in the form of a vertical bar. To make the effect feel more authentic, I designed the cursor not to blink during the typing process. I also applied posterization to the letters, so they didn’t appear in a linear sequence, adding to the natural feel. I’m really pleased with how it turned out—it gives the animation a genuine sense of human-like typing.

Canvas UI Animation

Creating the animation for Canvas was a fun and rewarding experience. To illustrate how whiteboarding a workflow works, I had to build a custom rig. For instance, when the cursor grabs the Slack app, a dashed, rectilinear line appears and follows the cursor. I achieved this by creating points based on the cursor’s x and y position. Each point in the rig was designed to either move along one axis or follow the position of another point, adding fluidity to the animation.

Another interesting challenge was animating the color picker. When showcasing how users can change the color of a node, I needed the HEX value to update in real time. To achieve this, I used expressions to convert the RGB color format (used by After Effects) into a hexadecimal color code. First, I normalized the value to the 0–255 range, and then converted it into a hexadecimal string. This allowed me to animate the HEX values smoothly from one color to another, making the transition feel natural.

Animating the Responsive Editor

One part of the project that really stood out as both a challenge and an exciting opportunity to innovate was animating the redesigned Zap Editor. The goal was to showcase features like the expandable sidebar, full-screen focus mode, and dropdown menus that smoothly swing to the side, making data clearer and easier to work with.

Instead of animating everything by hand, I decided to take a different approach and code the entire editor to make it responsive. By linking it to three controllers, I was able to animate everything with more precision, including smooth transitions and curves that gave it a polished feel.

The biggest challenge was making the paragraph text responsive—something After Effects doesn’t natively support. But with a little bit of coding and some simple math, I figured out how to make it work seamlessly.

This approach not only saved time but also gave me full creative control over the animations, making everything flow smoothly and feel more dynamic.

Homepage Animations

For the homepage animations, I had the pleasure of collaborating with Donna Fung, Senior Brand Designer at Zapier. I created six animations for the “Building Powerful Workflows” section, each representing one of six core values/functions: Connect, Automate, Customize, Visualize, Scale, and the Power of AI. It was incredibly rewarding to see these animations come to life on the homepage.

Of the six, the “Connect” animation was my favorite. I had the opportunity to animate the process of how the Copilot feature helps users create Zaps, adding a little magic to showcase its seamless functionality.

“Thanks for helping us bring life to the homepage! ✨”

TAMARA AUSTRING SENIOR BRAND PRODUCER, ZAPIER

ZapConnect Sizzle Video Recap

After completing the animations for the keynote, Julia and I dove straight into creating a post-event promo video. We were racing against the clock, aiming to make something energetic and visually spectacular. With limited time, we decided to reuse the product animations we had already created for the keynote.

I synced the animations to music and used boards with distinctive shapes that were part of the visual branding for the event. One particular challenge was creating a dynamic, resizing line of shapes—when one shape grew, others had to shrink. It was a tricky but rewarding process, and I’m really proud of how the final video turned out.

“Wow, these animations are looking slick!”

JANE ZHANG SENIOR PRODUCT MARKETING MANAGER, ZAPIER

Final Thoughts

Working on ZapConnect 2024 was a fulfilling experience—from keynote animations to homepage visuals and the sizzle video, each piece brought Zapier’s vision to life. It’s exciting to see these animations help make the event impactful and inspire users to embrace automation. I’m already looking forward to contributing to the next edition!

CREDITS