When to use an animated gif or a cinemagraph
Brilliant for social media, animated gifs and cinemagraphs are ideal means to convey some fast loading information or just capture the visitor’s imagination.
Gifs are essentially small compressed image files that make up a short sequence. Once made they can be uploaded wherever you want and will automatically loop continually.
Animated gifs are everywhere on social media, and used far more widely than you might suppose, NASA use them extensively to convey in a quick and easy way to understand, some of the complexities of their work online.
Kevin Burg & Jamie Beck take the format with photography as cinemagraphs to an art form in their work for major labels like Armani and Chanel.
The examples below are rather simpler, taken or adapted from existing footage, they nonetheless extend the value of a shoot if the graphics or content can be reworked as animated gifs or cinemagraphs.
The first example uses a still shot of a gym at the start of filming a promo. For the cinemagraph I have overlaid a clip of Andy lifting weights and a second clip of a second set of chrome weights that show the reflection of the weights being lifted going up and down. The empty space in the middle, where someone was actually being shown how to do the exercise, has been replaced with an image of the empty studio giving space for a logo reveal or call to action graphic.
The second version is simply focused on the weights being lifted. Each cinemagraph is under 30mb so really quick to load, no need to stream as I would our videos.
The animated gif below is taken from a motion graphics animation I created for my old programming company – it’s not always easy to make digital asset management, ERP and programming immediately engaging, so strong graphics and a little motion go together well to enhance the brand.
And using the graphics from the original animation in a gif form allows me to use simpler variations as promotional tools.