Lottie vs GIF: what’s the difference?

So you want to bring your static website to life with stunning animations, but which format do you choose – Lottie or GIF? First you need to understand the differences and benefits of each.

Let's take a look at how they compare…

What is Lottie?

Lottie is a JSON-based open-source animation file format developed by Airbnb. It allows designers and developers to add free and ready-to-use animations to their websites or mobile applications. You can edit your own interactive animations without expensive tools, like Adobe After Effect. But if you’re looking to put your creative cap on, you can still create Lottie files in After Effects.

Why Lottie?

Lottie animations are vector-based, so they’re usually much smaller than GIFs. However they still retain the same quality, if not better. This means that they work well on mobile devices, including Android, iOS and React Native apps, without having to make major adjustments. You can also fully customise Lottie animations to suit your brand with minimal effort – from the background colour to the animation speed, you can modify just about anything. Lottie animations can even be converted to GIFs for socials.

Can I use Lottie on my WordPress site?

The short answer is, yes! You can liven up your WordPress site with fun, colourful Lottie animations without having any design or coding experience. Simply go to Plugins in your WordPress Dashboard. Easy!

The benefits of Lottie:

• Fully customisable
• Smaller file size
• Scalable
• Interactive
• Multi-platform support
• Transparent backgrounds

What is a GIF?

GIF stands for Graphical Interchange Format and they've been enriching iconic memes for years – like the classic below. But their use goes beyond laughs and social media. GIFs bring boring old web pages to life. If you’re unfamiliar with this bitmap image format, they’re essentially a series of images (or videos with no sound) that loop continuously, without having to hit ‘play’.

Why GIF?

GIFs can display text, so they’re great for quickly conveying an important message on your site or social media channels. They can also handle larger file sizes, though this isn’t necessarily ideal on websites where speed is everything.

The benefits of GIF

• Quick to create
• Don't require design experience
• Can display text
• Convey messages quickly and easily
• Can handle larger file sizes

The verdict

Both Lottie and GIF create visually stunning animations for your website, but which is best? Well, it depends on how you’re using it! Lottie animations are great for high-quality, interactive visuals, whereas GIFs are more suitable for simpler animations or displaying text.

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