Designers who share their process get more followers, more clients, and more work. Here's how to record and export a design timelapse without disrupting your workflow.
Sharing your design process is one of the most effective things you can do for your career. It builds credibility, attracts clients, and shows the thinking behind the output — not just the final file.
A design timelapse is the most efficient format for this. Compress 3 hours of Figma, Illustrator, or Photoshop work into a 45-second clip, and you have something people will actually watch.
Here’s how to make one without it becoming a project in itself.
What you need
- Tau for recording, editing, and export
- Your design tool open and ready
- About 2 minutes of setup
Step 1: Set up your workspace first
Before you start recording, get your design file open and your workspace clean. Close anything you don’t want to appear on screen — email, Slack, unrelated browser tabs. Design timelapses look best when the only thing changing is the work.
Zoom in slightly in your design tool. At timelapse speed, small details become hard to read. A slightly zoomed view makes the final video easier to follow.
Step 2: Open Tau and select screen recording
Launch Tau and start a new recording. Select your screen as the source — choose the specific display your design tool is on if you have multiple monitors.
Frame interval recommendation for design:
- UI/product design (lots of iteration): 1 frame every 3–5 seconds
- Illustration or detailed artwork: 1 frame every 5–8 seconds
- Long all-day sessions: 1 frame every 10–15 seconds
The right interval depends on how fast you work and how long your session is. A 3-hour Figma session at 1 frame every 5 seconds will produce a ~2 minute timelapse at 30fps. Adjust to get the length you want.
Step 3: Consider adding a camera feed
If you want to show your presence alongside the work — especially useful for tutorials or personal brand content — enable multi-source recording in Tau. Your camera appears as a small overlay in the corner. It makes the timelapse feel more personal without distracting from the work.
Step 4: Record your session
Hit Record and design. Tau runs in the background — it won’t interfere with Figma, Illustrator, or any other tool.
Work naturally. Don’t try to perform for the recording. The most watchable design timelapses are honest ones, including the wrong turns and the revisions.
Step 5: Edit and export
When you stop recording, Tau drops you into the editor.
Trim: Cut anything at the start or end that isn’t part of the actual work — loading screens, tab switching before you settled in.
Add a timer overlay: A running stopwatch in the corner tells the viewer how long the work actually took. It gives scale to the compression. Use a clean font and position it where it won’t cover key elements.
Add music: A subtle background track makes the timelapse feel intentional. Attach an audio file in Tau’s editor and set the start point.
Export: MP4 for Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube. WEBM if you’re embedding it on a portfolio site.
What to do with it
Twitter/X: Design timelapses perform consistently well here. Keep the caption short: what you built and how long it took. Pin the best one to your profile.
LinkedIn: Design process content over-performs on LinkedIn compared to most other content types. Post with a brief note about the project and the problem you were solving.
Portfolio: Embed the WEBM on your case study pages. It adds depth to the written writeup and shows process in a way screenshots can’t.
Dribbble/Behance: Attach the timelapse to the project. It’s one of the few ways to stand out on platforms saturated with static shots.
The setup time is about 2 minutes per session once you’ve done it once. The output compounds — each timelapse is content, portfolio material, and a record of your process. Download Tau at trytau.app and start with your next session.