Top 10 best GIF artists of 2015

Recently the Adam Leibsohn, COO of Giphy, gave a talk about the importance of communication through GIFs (well, he would, wouldn’t he).

But a partisan opinion aside, the tendency to rely on GIFs to communicate our thoughts and feelings online is something that is constantly evolving. With an onslaught of media at our fingertips, words are becoming less effective when communicating online. Words provide literal definitions…GIFS provide a fast and easy communicative tool to get the message across and move on. And if it happens to be a Mean Girls quote, then more power to you.



The art world is another place where GIFs are gaining traction. It’s like Pop Art on steroids, as graphic designers and artists are finding that the crossover of animation and cultural referencing is too golden to pass up. Could this be the next great art form of our post-Internet existence?

GIFs give us a small amount of time to communicate a large message, especially when we inject artistic intention into the medium. Adam Leibsohn understands that the time it takes to communicate a message is getting smaller – sometimes a string of emoticons or a GIF capture of a film will do. More than that, it assumes that the person you’re communicating with has the same cultural reference points that you do – that Ru Paul or Oprah or Tina Fey can encapsulate what you’re thinking much better than any old words could. And in some ways he’s right.

Take for example Julian Glander. His GIFs are a clever mix of fun, colour and humour. They’re like short animations, a snippet of blobby goodness. His 3D shapes give us the same sense of stop-start animation with a digital twist.



Or there’s Dutch designer  Florian de Looij, whose simple colour spectrums become a hypnotic repeated pattern. Like Bridget Riley’s Op-Art, the perspective and colours do the work for you to create satisfying GIFscapes.

Or there’s the un-flashy work of Rebecca Mock that incorporates a more traditional illustrative touch with simple movement. Her background in comics means that these GIFs combine narrative elements too. The busy desk full of laptops and wires shows a phone beeping for just a second – a delicate nod to modern communication, potentially summed up in Leibsohn’s talk.

In Signe Pierce’s work we find hyper-reality combine with brash colours, advertising slogans and robotic figures. Chiming perfectly with the GIF’s medium, Pierce captures a dystopian world, where high fashion collides with abject failure.

Commissioned for California Inspires Me (collaboration between Google Play and California Sunday Magazine) Nicolas Ménard animates the tale of Jack Black growing up in Hermosa Beach. 

Even the art-world big dogs know the value of a GIF. Tate Britain’s 1840s GIF Party asked contributors to take famous artwork and give them a digital makeover. The results were sometimes beautiful, but sometimes creepy (we’re looking at you Museum GIFs baby!). Matthias Brown aka Museum GIFs and TraceLoops remixes of Joanna Mary Wells, Portrait of Sidney Wells 1859.

GIFs are also a great way to functionally display your work....

Tom Lancaster, Art Director for Topman, uses the animation features to accent the function of Spring-wear in his campaigns. 

Nicholas Edmondson illustrates the Amsterdam Transport System. 

And Bomper Studio brings their skills in 3D visualisation to life with these short teasers. 

GIFs can also be a great way to add more to your digital web and application mockups. See how Tom McDaid uses it to display the flow of the user on this piece for Orange. 

The examples above all give us an insight into a medium that’s growing fast and has something to say. It isn’t vacuous, it’s creative, it's functional... it’s GIF art.

And we want to see any examples Creativepool’s talented cast have too – post your work, or links to other artists you love below!