• The New Yorker runs one: A beautiful little animation atop a Rob Dubbin post about an unusual video game called Faraway. In an email to Poynter, Dubbin said he made the GIF from a video promoting the game, which isn’t out yet. (It’s not the first time the site’s run an animated GIF, but this one feels like it reflects the magazine’s aesthetic.)
Of course @newyorker‘s doing animated GIFs now. If they’re all as 8-bit and beautiful as this, I’m in j.mp/YqlpVg HT @atotalmonet
— Adam Clark Estes (@adamclarkestes) May 3, 2013
• A collection of politicians dancing, in GIFs: One starring Karl Rove features a David Gregory cameo. “[T]hat experience has taught me that’s something I ought to avoid,” Gregory said in 2010 after taking heat for hoofing it with politicos.
• Real talk on GIFs from Ann Friedman: “I wasn’t planning to be a commentator on GIF culture,” the form’s foremost ambassador tells Kathleen Sweeney.
I believe strongly in high and low brow, serious and funny–marrying them–not only reach more people but to have a greater impact. I think people who use GIFs most successfully are using them that way. But really when you ask, What is a GIF?, it’s essentially a punch line.
Friedman mentions in the same piece that Tomorrow, the magazine she and other former GOOD staffers produced, is likely a one-off: “The sheer amount of hours that went into Tomorrow, makes it not super feasible to do it again.”
• And finally, because it’s the end of the week, here is a primer on “Iron Man 3”, told in — you guessed it — GIFs.
