The fastest way to make a site feel cheap is to animate everything. The second fastest is to animate nothing. The difference between premium motion and noise is not quantity — it is whether each movement carries information.
What useful motion does
Useful motion answers a question the user would otherwise have to work out. Where did this panel come from? What changed after I clicked? Which of these things is interactive? A reveal that stages content in reading order is doing hierarchy work. A bounce on a logo is not doing anything.
The two rules we hold
We hold two rules. First, motion follows the content's logic: things enter from where they conceptually live, and related elements move together. Second, duration scales with distance — a small state change is fast, a full section transition can afford to breathe.
The constraint that improves the work most is honouring prefers-reduced-motion properly. Not disabling everything, but replacing movement with a plain state change. If a design collapses when motion is removed, the motion was carrying weight that the layout should have carried.
Why reduced motion improves the work
Good motion is mostly invisible. People do not notice the transitions on a well-built product. They notice that it feels considered, and they cannot say why.