You Don't Need Animations
Emil Kowalski's essay on animating only when the motion has a purpose
"You Don't Need Animations" is an essay on Emil Kowalski's site. The meta description is "Why you are animating more often than you should." The opening says an animation needs a purpose, and that motion can make an interface feel unpredictable, slow, or annoying. The part read here uses a Linear marketing animation for Product Intelligence, a button scale-down, Sonner's enter animation, and a morphing feedback control as examples. He writes that the morph is fine when people rarely see it, and that the same motion becomes irritating if they use it many times a day. A banner says enrollment for aiforui.dev is open with 7 days left. A reuse license was not on the page. His homepage is already a separate catalog record.
Read this essay before you add motion. The opening test is whether the animation has a purpose. The examples on the page are a Linear product animation, a button press, Sonner's enter transition, and a morph that he says should stay rare. The page is prose. It does not grant a license to copy the essay. His other essays stay on emilkowal.ski. This record is only this URL.
Why it is here. It is the specific essay other designers cite when they argue for less interface motion.
Your agent can also search Index itself through the MCP server.
- Emil Kowalski
- purpose test for animation
- Sonner and Linear examples
Verified 2026-10-25. HTTP 200. Checked https://emilkowal.ski/ui/you-dont-need-animations on 2026-10-25. HTTP 200. The title, the meta description, the purpose argument, the Linear, button, Sonner, and feedback examples, and the aiforui.dev banner are in the HTML. No license was on the page. The homepage https://emilkowal.ski is already the record emil-kowalski. Source tweet: https://x.com/eptwts/status/2092298910190448727.
