Google Launches a Data Gif Maker for Animated Visualizations

Google News Lab recently launched a Data Gif Maker tool for creating animated data visualizations.

“Data visualizations are an essential storytelling tool in journalism, and though they are often intricate, they don’t have to be complex.”, Simon Rogers, Data Editor at Google News Labs said, “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.”

When you use the tool, it feels like it is in its infancy. It only supports two comparisons, and the Gif export is so slow it’s excruciating, but the results look good. Here is an example of taking PHP version usage stats from W3Techs:

Give it a try the next time you have a simple data set you’d like to showcase.