A word on pronunciation• According to Steve Wilhite,

the creator of the GIF format, the original pronunciation deliberately echoes the peanut butter brand JIF, with a soft "G" /ˈdʒɪf/ as in "gin".

"Choosy developers choose GIF” – Compuserve Employees

• An alternative pronunciation uses a hard "G" as in "graphics", reflecting the expanded acronym.

Both pronunciations are given as correct by the Oxford English Dictionary, which added GIF as an officially recognized noun and verb in 2012.

There are multiple websites dedicated to championing one pronunciation over the other.

VOTE NOW

http://bit.ly/giff_poll

• 1987: The original version of the GIF format, 87a, developed by Compuserve

• 1989: CompuServe devises an enhanced version, called 89a, adding support for animationdelays and transparent background colors

• 1991: Tim Berners-Lee opened the web to the public

Then we started to see lots of cheesy, functional, cliparty little gifs and logos like these

The Oooka Chaka Baby • A proto internet

meme believed by many to be the first truly viral gif. It spread, like many things in the 90s, through email chains.

As the Web 2.0 movement started to take hold in early 2000s, the gif fell out of favour with designers who were trying to differentiate their properties from the old school style of web page popular in the late 90s.

GEOCITIES KILLED THE GIF

Okay, it didn’t KILL the gif…

But it damaged its reputation!

Via Geocities-izer

Myspace : A glimmer of hope?

2006-2007: Blingee!

(Here’s where a lot of that post-modern irony and nostalgia stuff comes in.)

People started to make their own gifs from celebrity, film and TV clips, using them in conversations on forums and online communities (real ones.)

This still continues today…

But there are MORE of them…

• More people online• More tools to create with• More accessible media to source from online• More places to put it all

The GIF as cultureThey’ve become an ideal

form of expression for the smartphone generation, as people share and reblog GIFs both personal and pop cultural.

• Sort of social currency – traded, shared, hoarded – Who found it first? Who found it fastest?

• Who can find the funniest?

REACTION GIFS

If a picture is worth 1000 words, a reaction gif is worth ALL OF THE WORDS.

Fandom gifs

Tumblr is a more obtuse, nostalgic medium than what mainstream fangirl / fanboy audiences might use (read: Not a Bieber and 1D-centric space)

Popular gif-heavy fandoms: Mean Girls, Dr. Who, Breaking Bad, Newsies, The Avengers,The Cosby show, Tyra Banks’ facial expressions, Game of Thrones, Walking Dead,90s cartoons, etc.

Also: Ryan Gosling / Every hot girl ever (but especially Kate Upton).

Internet Memes

Deal With It In June of 2010, animated GIFs with dropping

sunglasses were popularized on the media sharing website Dump.fm. Later spread through Tumblr and other networks.

Haters gonna hate gif

Phrase started spreading in the late 90s, but the animated GIF phenomenon took place largely in 2010 (and beyond.) In June 2011, BoingBoing posted the “microscopic GIF edition” of the series.

#WhatShouldWeCallMe?

NEWS GIFSThe gif isn’t all internet culture and social

funtimes, however. There are some very practical uses for this format in the news world.

“More compelling than a static photo and more immediate than Web video, the animated GIF is a uniquely digital mode of conveying ideas and emotion. Like the Twitter hashtag, which has transitioned from a functional way of sorting content to its own part of speech, the animated GIF has gone from a simple file type to its own mode of expression. GIFs have grown up, and they are everywhere right now.” – Poynter.

"The GIF has evolved from a medium for pop-cultural memes into a tool with serious applications including research and journalism, and its lexical identity is transforming to keep pace.” - Oxford

• The 2012 Olympics• U.S. election debates• Superstorm Sandy• Political conventions• Protests• Vigils• World events• Award show

Notable use cases

Major news sites using the gif more often as a storytelling tool.

Riff Gifs

Faster, and Faster…Outlets like Buzzfeed and MTV are seemingly

full-staffed during major events now (The Superbowl, the Grammys) to provide instant, play-by-play GIF coverage.

Audience demand is high, with people requesting gifs on Twitter the moment they happen.

SPORTSSports reporters love using gifs to illustrate plays

accurately and easily without having to embed a heavy video.

FASHION

Shaking up the fashion industry in a big way – as is the online world in general.

FASHGIF – Greta Larkins

• Started as passion Tumblog

• Got increasingly popular (great mix of real style news and unique artistic style)

• Major collaborations – NYFW, Calvin Klein, Vogue Homme

ART GIFS

• At Art Basel/Miami last month, a curated show of GIF art made a historic foray into the high-art scene.

• Judges for “Moving theStill” included Rodarte,Michael Stipe, NicolaFormichetti

movingthestill.tumblr.com

Vibrant, growing GIF art scene

• Reed + Rader• Mr. Gif• Yuriy Mironoff• Lacey Micallef• Matthew DiVito• Mert Keskin (Haydirocket)• Paolo Čerić

Easy Peasy

IMGFlip (turns YouTube videos to gifs), GifSoup, Gickr, MakeAGIF, GIFmake, etc.

GIF/ JIF?

• http://vimeo.com/54568033