Make your own data gifs with our new tool

Data visualizations are an essential storytelling tool in journalism, and though they are often intricate, they don’t have to be complex. In fact, with the growth of mobile devices as a primary method of consuming news, data visualizations can be simple images formatted for the device they appear on.

Enter data gifs.

These animations can be used for a variety of sophisticated storytelling approaches among data journalists: one example is Lena Groeger, who has become *the* expert in working with data gifs.

Today we are releasing Data Gif Maker, a tool to help journalists make these visuals, which show share of search interest for two competing topics.

Data Gif Maker works like this:

1. Enter two data points

We typically use the tool to represent competing search interest, but it can show whatever you want it to—polling numbers, sales figures, movie ratings, etc. If you want to show search interest, you can compare two terms in the Google Trends explore tool, which will give you an average number (of search interest over time) for each term. Then input those two numbers in Data Gif Maker.

2. Add your text

3. Choose your colors

4. Choose your explanatory text

5. Hit “Launch Comparisons” and “Download as Gif”

And there you go—you’ve made your first animated data gif. Pro-tip #1: the high resolution download takes longer but it’s better quality for social sharing. Pro-tip #2: Leave the window open on your desktop while it’s creating the gifs as it will do so quicker.

If you want the visual, but not the gif, hit “Launch Comparisons” and it will open in your browser window. Just hit space to advance through the views (it’s set up to show five pieces of data, one after the other).

Find the tool useful? We’d love to see what you do with it. Email us at [email protected].