Designed for the Office of Graduate and Continuing Studies at PSU

Believe it or not, this was my first GIF. I could never really get over the poor quality. The circumstances of situation, however, required a GIF, as opposed to a flash file or animated PNG. So, I set out to create a GIF with the highest quality possible.

The Process

We wanted to advertise on a specific website in order to better target coaches for our online Health, Human Performance, and Recreation (HHPR) Master’s Degree program. The specs of the job required a 160×300 gif limited to 3 frames.

I knew the 3rd frame had to be the call-to-action. I figured the first two frames would be most appropriately used to point out the two most relevant benefits of the program. Means we were targeting coaches, one of those points should focus on the convince of an online program. We also wanted to make sure anyone who clicked on the link would take a look at the three different emphasis areas, which we utilized the remaining frame to advertise.

For continuity, I decided to only change part of the GIF for each frame, the bottom half. The last frame had to include the “Apply Now!” call-to-action, the splitface logo, and “Pittsburg State University Graduate School. For the other two, in addition to the persuasive points, we wanted to include images. I pulled these from our library of images. I wanted to make sure at least one featured a coach, and the other featured equipment. I made the images on 3 different layes, then used the Timeline in Photoshop to animate them. The final result can be seen above.