Should Your Email Signature Include an Animated GIF?

2018 seemed to be the year when everyone added an animated GIFs in their email signatures.

We noticed this trend back in 2016 when our local Google representatives email signature included their new logo moving around. This was an excellent good use of the email signature and executed beautifully, in typical Google fashion.

Since then we’ve seen a steady increase in animated GIF’s making their way into email signatures. Some are awesome, like the one above, others less so. So here’s our guide to adding animation to your email signature.

OK before we get started, what is a GIF? GIF stands for Graphics Interchange Format and pronounced GIF and not JIF. JIF, on the other hand, was a household cleaning product now called CIF. Anyway, we digress, a GIF is a type of image file which has been around since before the modern Internet, well 1987.  What makes a GIF so different from that of other image formats such as JPEG and PNG is that you can create animation with a GIF. The limiting factor of a GIF is that it only supports 256 colours for each frame, so isn’t ideal for photographs.

If this has sparked off your creative juices, but you don’t know where to start then get in touch we’d be more than happy to help.