Why does motion design feels so lonely? 💁🏻

Yes, we are

There’s something you feel but probably haven’t said out loud.

You opened the app (well, we know which one), put the headphones on, and started working. Eight hours later you closed the laptop and realized you hadn’t spoken to anyone. The job just went that way.

Then the rest of the “day” to enjoy, stay at home? Maybe, but maybe you are already too tired of it.

When I started, working alone felt like the whole point. Just me, a screen, and whatever I was trying to figure out. That felt like some kind of freedom. At some point, the same thing started feeling like something else.

Lighter, yes. But also emptier.

I looked online on this, partly because I’ve been talking about it with many colleagues, and partly to understand it better.

What I found was more specific than I expected, in research terms.

So, coming from years back, A 2019 survey of UK freelancers found that 64% felt lonely on a daily basis. The same study found that over half had experienced depression linked directly to their work. A Leapers study from 2024 added something that it’s as surprising as it is not really: freelancers take fewer sick days for mental health than the general workforce, despite reporting higher rates of stress and anxiety. There is no one to call in sick to.

BTW, Leapers it’s a great place to see studies on Freelancers x Mental Health

And it’s not just the solitude. A group of researchers at the University of Michigan found that people in coworking spaces reported thriving at unusually high rates. They weren’t collaborating on anything. Working near other people who were also working made their own work feel real. Someone called this “identity validation.” we could easily call it as having eyes around us 👀

Actually, even without having a name for it, I experienced this many times. Since I tend to work at coworking spaces and was doing previously at some cafes, libraries, etc.

The environment of other people working left and right, just made me enter more in a zone of focus. Than a normal office, or at home.

Motion design has a specific version of this problem.

You’re usually the only person in the room who does what you do. The client doesn’t fully understand it. Other designers might, but they’re in their own rooms with their own headphones. A

nd the work itself, the part that’s actually interesting, the decisions about timing and weight and what moves and why, that part is invisible to most people who see the result.

You chose this. I chose this too. The flexibility, the focus, the ability to build something alone from start to finish. That part it is real.

But the brain wasn’t built to create in a vacuum for years on end. Found a term on these articles and stuff, talking about ‘polyvagal’ theory suggests the nervous system is constantly scanning for other regulated bodies as signals of safety.

A silent home office gives it nothing to settle against. The body reads that as low-grade vigilance, even when everything is technically fine.

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Let’s step back a second. I agree that there are great benefits of working from home. Even me, being a recent father, I really enjoy those moments when my break it’s a moment of sharing with my partner and my daughter.

But here I’m talking on a general sense, on a human level. What does it means to just work in a room, everyday for years, that feel a bit more like an echo-chamber.

Everyone “performs” the freedom. The laptop, the coffee shop, the headphones-in flow state. Nobody admits that sometimes working alone for eight hours makes you feel a little invisible.

I think the reason tMSC exists, underneath all the practical stuff, is to embrace these topics. And to bring the space to comment about it. So feel free to drop it below (or by replying to this email) :) 👇

That probably won’t fix it. But naming it might be a start.