Trigger warning: There is a lot of motion on this page

Delighting audiences with animation

Creating animation for Litmus email and in-app

Animation has been a discipline I have enjoyed since 2004 and the days of Flash (RIP). Initially creating Flash websites before becoming much more in-tune with SEO best practices.

From 2009 I applied my animation skills to display advertising and the creation of (many) banner suites. Moving from Flash to HTML5, this is where I got my first real world exposure to testing and itterating, splitting traffic between two versions to understand the impact of different messaging, design elements and layouts.

Animation to elevate brand personality

At Litmus I create animation for email, which have also been leveraged within the product. Subscriber inboxes are quite often overwhelmed with multiple messages, as a designer it's important to find ways to cut through the noise. Animation is a great way to grab a reader's attention and help them to engage with the content, absorb messaging and take action.

Movement within email can often delight subscribers and elevate brand personality, eminate brand values and support value alignment. Much like the tooltips and micro-interactions we see in products and apps animation can also be used to educate readers, offering a first look at new product features and guidance on how to interact with them.

An educational animation supporting the launch of a product revamp, helping the user to understand a new journey and additional features.
This animation supported the launch of a new journey, highlighting the much improved way to bring module snippets and partials into Builder, making email production within Litmus more efficient.

Staying lean and accessible

There are lots of important considerations when animating, best practices that serve email and web to ensure that movement is used in a way that won't negatively impact users health and load times. With the help of Carin Slater and Alice Li (both kick ass email developers) I created a couple of resources for the Litmus blog to help the email community leverage animation for email, including A guide to animated GIFs in email and Animated PNGs in Email: An Alternative to GIFs.