Why Marketing Needs Motion: LottieFiles
2nd March 2022
What is Lottie?
Back in the day, creating complex animations for web, Android and iOS was an arduous process. You either had to add bulky image files for each screen size or write a thousand lines of breakable, hard-to-maintain code. Because of this, most websites and apps weren’t using animation — despite it being a powerful tool for communicating ideas and creating compelling user experiences.
Skip to today and we have Lottie! Originally created by Hernan Torrisi with an After Effects extension called ‘Bodymovin’ and then developed by Airbnb, a Lottie is a JSON-based animation file format that enables designers to add animations to any website or mobile application as easily as images. Lottie allows developers to build rich animations without the painstaking process of re-writing them.
Why use Lottie?
Lottie has several features built into its API (application programming interface) to make it more versatile and efficient. It works on any device (source) and has super small file sizes meaning quicker loading times for users. They can also have transparent backgrounds, and because they’re vector-based, can scale up or down without pixelation. And that’s one of the main reasons designers and developers favour them over other formats like PNG and GIF. Another great feature of Lottie is how customisable it is. With Lottie, the customisation opportunities are pretty much endless.
And the best part? Lottie animations don’t require any knowledge of coding! You just need a Lottie player. Open-source and free Lottie players exist for the web, iOS, Android, Windows, QT, Tizen, and other platforms.
Lottie in After Effects and XD
After Effects – is a digital visual effects, motion graphics, and compositing application used for animation and the post-production process of film making, video games, and television production.
Adobe XD – is a UI/UX design and collaboration tool with a strong user base. The tool allows users to create anything from smartwatch apps to full-fledged websites, and now it also supports Lottie animations natively.
Remember how prototypes looked with stock images and placeholders? You had to explain to clients how it would look in the final product and leave it to their imagination. Well, that’s in the past now! With the new Lottie plugin for XD, you can add animations from LottieFiles to your prototypes and make them look just like the finished output.
Here at Bopgun we work with both After Effects and XD and now they can work hand in hand fluidly. With plugins available for both applications we can now create exciting and engaging animations to boost the experience of whatever project we are working on.
Why Marketing Needs Motion
If you are running an online business, a YouTube channel, or any other form of community on the web, or if you are marketing one, then you know the importance of engaging with your audience. Simply put – highly engaging content leads to more subscribers and a better brand positioning.
Videos are more and more actively being used around the web these days. And these stats make it easy to see why…
- Marketers who use video grow revenue 49% faster than non-video users
- Including a video on your landing page can boost your conversion rate by up to 80%
- Video posts have the highest organic engagement on Facebook
- Video posts on Instagram receive twice as much engagement as compared to other types of posts
- 80% of video marketers say video has directly helped increase sales and 95% of video marketers plan to increase or maintain video spend in 2020
How can Bopgun help with you with your animations?
Here at Bopgun we create truly extraordinary experiences that engage and delight.
We are a Bristol based creative marketing agency passionate about delivering meaningful and lasting results. From helping your brand stand out in a crowd to increasing online sales – whatever your needs we are a creative agency that delivers.
With the customer at the heart of everything we do, our range of strategic, creative, technical and commercial expertise enables us to identify how all the different elements of your customers’ journey fit together – offering you a complete turnkey marketing service that delivers real results.
Contact us today to discover how our team can help you with your animation needs.
