So you hear about new ways to implement animation in design all the time but don’t know which to choose for your website?
In this article, we review the best animation formats, providing the advantages and disadvantages of each type.
In addition, we’ll give your our top choice out of the most popular formats.
Why we Use Animation in Web Design
Boring designs fail to captivate users, keeping them engaged. Animation is one of our few tools that bring web pages and applications to life, reducing bounce rates and increasing conversions.
However, picking the wrong file type can hurt the user experience by slowing pages down or limiting design capabilities. That’s why you must understand your goals for animation and which formats can help you reach the mark in the most efficient way possible.
The following factors are crucial in choosing an animation format:
- File size
- Interactivity
- Compatibility
- Responsiveness
- Libraries to download (popularity)
- Customization
- Quality
Types of Animation Formats
Below we comprehensively analyze the best animation formats available to modern web developers and designers. We’ll provide an overview and dig into the pros and cons of each format.
SVG
Scalable vector graphics (SVG) is a format that uses XML to define vector-based graphics and animations.
The most significant advantage of SVG files is they are vector-based, meaning the quality won’t decline when you increase the size. SVG is also compatible with all major browsers and is one of the smallest types of animation files. As a result, it is a widely used format for web and mobile applications.
While SVG is a practical option, especially for static designs, its animation capabilities are limited. Building a complex animation and exporting in SVG requires significant scripting, increasing the size and quality while making them a challenge to develop and maintain.
CSS Animations
Creating animations using CSS properties and keyframes that can be applied to HTML elements is called CSS animation sequences.
Adding motion graphics with CSS is popular because it is a fundamental technology used on the web. That means you won’t have to worry about version control; the animations are incredibly lightweight and easy to build and manipulate.
The downside is that CSS animations, like SVG, have a limitation when designing more complex arrangements as they can be challenging to create, thus restricting the design options to simpler elements.
Lottie
A JSON (JavaScript object notation) based animation format allows for creating complex vector animations that can be exported for use on the web and mobile apps.
Lottie is the newest way to incorporate animations; the format is rapidly increasing in popularity because it is lightweight and scalable. Animations built-in JSON are incredibly small and use vectors to they can scale without decreasing the quality. In addition, you can manipulate various design parameters (size, speed, delay, triggers) with JavaScript making the animation fully customizable.
One of the disadvantages of Lottie is its novelty. As a result, you can run into compatibility issues despite being smaller and more interactive than other formats. In addition, some CMS and browsers don’t have the tools built in to work seamlessly with JSON animation files.
While Lottie is the most interactive and customizable animation format, building them requires proficiency in design software. However, you can avoid making Lotties from scratch by sourcing designs from a library like Creattie.
GIF
A bitmap image format that supports animation and is commonly used for short, looping animations on the web.
GIFs are fundamental to internet culture and remain the best way to present customizable, audio-less looped videos or animations. As a result, all web-based tools have the technology built in to support the format.
Another reason GIF is such a popular animation format is they are easy to customize. You can add text, clip live action, combine videos, and build animations, making them a go-to option for creating viral online content.
The downside of using GIFs for animation is they are bulky and don’t offer interactivity with users.
Check out the item we mentioned earlier in GIF format to see the contrast in animation quality.
Additionally, GIF is limited to 256 distinct colors from the 24-bit RBG color space, so that you may be stuck with slightly off colors or lower quality than animations in other formats.
Video
Video formats that use compressed digital video and audio to create high-quality video content for playback on various devices and platforms.
Using formats that render videos like MP4 and WebM offers high-quality visuals and will support complex animations. However, the file sizes are large, you’ll need a video player integration, and the animation isn’t interactive.
And now, check out the same video in MP4 format to further compare and appreciate the distinctions between various animation formats.
Our Winner
Rendering animation on web and mobile applications is essential to modern marketing. Motion graphics keep users engaged and, in turn, will drive conversion rates.
While having all the popular formats, including SVG, GIF, CSS, and video, in your designer toolbelt is essential, Lottie 🏆 is by far the superior option.
The JSON-based technology is exponentially smaller, offers easy customizations, and can handle complex animations.
Even though Lottie requires design experience to build animations from scratch, Creattie gives you access to thousands of industry-specific Lottie illustrations and icons. So you don’t need to know how to use motion graphics software, and you can fully customize the designs to fit your project.
