Enzo’s Monday Motion #128: We Love GIF
Bad quality and extremely repetitiveness are normally the qualities of failure, but somehow one medium got away with that. This edition is an ode to 31 year old filetype that is bigger than ever before. We love you GIF!
GIF 101
The GIF, or graphics interchange format, was introduced to the world by Compuserve in 1987. According to it’s creative father, developer Steve Wilhite, it is pronounced with a soft G. There’s a big debate which gif was first, but this breakdancing man could be the one.
The main reason for it’s pour quality lays in the limited amount of colours (256 to be specific). The gif-community embraces this flaw with love and has produced millions of them. Besides the functional reasons like buffer animations, the biggest use of the GIF is to express yourself. There isn’t a single emotion or event that lacks a corresponding GIF. It’s logical successor APNG was introduced in 2004, but strangely enough it didn’t take over it’s simple minded big brother.
Brooklyn based illustrator / animator Cari Vander Yacht masters the art of classic GIF and his latest reel is a joy to watch.
Brilliantly Bad
If you don’t have much to spend, you have to get (extra) creative. FIAT USA belongs to this category. When the Richards Group presented the concept for their Tumblr page, the campaign got promoted to TV. The GIF style clips fitted nicely with the ‘Endless Fun’ campaign and even better with the young target audience.
The concepters and designers had to do their absolute best the make it as (brilliantly) bad as possible. Corny stories all over and down scaling the worse designs ever. All for the sake of feeling gif. The full series are available in Part 1 and Part 2.
The power of repetition
The creatives at 72andSunny Amsterdam have taken the art of GIF to the next level. Their recipe consists of selecting the best parts of the classic gif (repetition), the meme’s (short copy overlay) and current production standards.
The campaign fits perfectly to the target audience. With a three step storyline, 72 slightly bends the rules of the simple single loop animation. Still great work directed by Keith Schofield and produced by Caviar UK.
A single gif is like a burger without fries: Check out the other spots High Five and Epic Trip.
Good, Better, Best
Concept en creative wise AXE took it to the next level, but Brahma Beer is the undisputed champion. Heavy weight screenwriter Armando Bo (Birdman) directed the commercial. Moral of this story: there’s a time to GIF and a time to live.
Agency Santo nails it from concept, to copy, to production. Extra credits to production agency Rebolución for the execution. Nothing to add to this one, except watch it again and again and…
That other emotion
There are more emotions that happiness and excitement. Big props to the Road Safety Authority Ireland using this format for such a heavy subject.
In the words of so many victims of road traffic crashes: “it only takes a split second”. The story is nicely build up. Like every accident you don’t see it coming till the very end. Concept by Irish International BBDO. Extra credits this time for DoP Carl Burke and the sound of Jon Clarke (Factory).
Let me Google Giphy that
If there’s one place to find the right gif, it’s giphy.com. Dark Igloo was hired to rebrand the rising search engine. Together with the website and stationary they delivered a sweet ident.
The complete production was in hands of Jimmy Simpson. His concept is based on the 90s classics ident of film house Regal Cinema. Of course, with a Giphy look and feel. Sound Design by Vincent Simpson.
