Kinetic Type
Coming soonOne-click kinetic type, powered by real variable fonts.
After Effects 2026 added native variable-font axes: the ability to keyframe a font's own weight, width and slant. Using it means hand-building selectors, range animators and expressions for every look. Kinetic Type replaces all of that with a curated library of 26 animated looks that apply in a single click.
A content library, not another rigging tool.
The existing options in this space were built before After Effects had variable-font support at all, so they're general-purpose axis-animation tools where you still design every look yourself. Kinetic Type is built specifically on top of the native axis feature, and ships finished looks rather than the machinery to make them.
- Real, native keyframes and animator properties, not an expression that depends on the plugin at render time.
- Render-farm safe, and your project keeps working if the plugin is ever removed.
- Animates the letterforms themselves, so it layers cleanly on top of AE's built-in position and scale presets.
Twenty-six looks, endlessly adjustable.
Six style families
Weight Reveals, Per-Char Wiggle, Breathing Weight, Elastic Width, multi-axis Signature looks, and a Flair group (Wave, Glitch, Stomp, Shiver and Sway) for more expressive motion.
Genuinely one click
Select a text layer, click a look, done. Re-click to remove it; click a different look and it replaces the first cleanly instead of stacking animators.
Smart axis detection
Not every font exposes every axis. Kinetic Type reads what your font actually supports, rigs only those axes, and tells you plainly what it skipped rather than failing.
Global & per-look controls
Duration, Intensity and Stagger apply over any look, plus an Advanced panel exposing a few curated knobs specific to each: wiggle randomness, reveal direction, bloom amount.
Loop & write-on
Repeat any look for the length of the comp with restart or ping-pong looping, and layer an independent reveal-by-character, word or line on top without interference.
Built-in font browser
Search and preview every variable font on your system with axis-range chips and favourites, plus five bundled open-licence fonts so the previews work before you've installed anything.
See it working.
Technical detail.
- Format
- Adobe CEP extension: an HTML/CSS/JS panel over a UI-agnostic ExtendScript engine.
- Platform
- Windows for version 1. The system font-install feature is Windows-only.
- After Effects
- Requires After Effects 2026 (26.0) or later, as it depends on that release's native variable-font axis support.
- Fonts
- Your text layer needs a genuine variable OpenType font exposing the relevant axes. Five open-licence variable fonts are bundled for previews and can be installed system-wide.
- Output
- Real, native After Effects keyframes and animator properties. No render-time plugin dependency.
- Library
- 26 animated looks across 6 families, with multi-layer apply, loop and write-on modifiers.
- Status
- Feature-complete for its v1 scope. Passed engine testing, an end-to-end integration run, a code review and a usability review. Packaging is the remaining step before release.
More tools for After Effects.
Want it when it lands?
Kinetic Type is feature-complete and heading into packaging. Get in touch and we'll let you know the moment it's available.