Animated GIFs For Valentine’s Day

I’m like a kid with a new toy.

That’s probably because I have a new toy.

The new toy is GIFQuickMaker which I bought from the Mac App Store for $2.99.

You can import as many JPEGs as you want, order them, and set the display time for each to a tenth of a second. You can then compile the GIF and run it with just two clicks.

Not quite right? Go back and adjust the timing, then repeat till you like the result.

I created the following GIFs using old photos and illustrations from the Internet Archive Book Images collection. It’s part of the Commons Project run by Flickr.

There are millions of images, most of which have no copyright restrictions. Quality varies. I added color to the images below, and cleaned them up a bit.

I like memes (“meems”), or what are sometimes called image macros, but haven’t used them much. The classic meme is just an image with a caption laid over it, using white capital letters with a black outline and the Impact font.

In these examples, I’ve added meme-like text at the end to give each animated GIF a punchline.

Here’s Napoleon doing a little daydreaming on Valentines Day.

Design note: the two women were extracted from the old photo below (another copyright-free Internet Archive image). I colorized them in Pixelmator.

Animated GIFs are a fun marketing tool. Brands can entertain their followers (and stay top-of-mind) by posting them to social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

For example, you could easily adapt the above GIFs for a brand like Coca-Cola by just adding an extra tagline. Here are two examples.

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Ever built an animated GIF and used it for marketing? Please leave a comment.

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You might also enjoy this Valentine video I did for Coca-Cola.

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About Mark: I’m an illustrator specializing in humor, branding, social media, and content marketing. I create images that get content seen and shared.

You can view my portfolio, and connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Questions? Send me an email.

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