Choosy Designers Choose...

GIF or JIF? How do YOU pronounce it?

It’s show and tell time!

I discovered something last week that’s delighting me no end.

GIFs WORK on Substack.

I experimented on a whim for two days last week as I rebuilt my StyleYOURStack site. I needed some downtime to play. After years of searching for my true vocation, I’ve landed in an amazing place. My work IS play. I couldn’t be more grateful to spend the majority of each day work-playing.

I’m like a little kid with a coloring book, or an Etch-A-Sketch, or some finger paints. None of those references are digital, so they give away my age. Yes, I’m a late boomer.

Analog toys were all I played with when I was a kid. When I was a kid, play WAS my vocation. Here I am, back at the beginning. Life does come full circle. But thankfully my range of toys has expanded to include the digital ones, and now I’m busier than ever, PLAYING!

I started with my logo. It used to look like this:

But let me loose, with a handy-dandy palette of colors, an adventurous demeanor, and some design tools…and look what happened! It’s bright, it’s slightly queer, and it’s fun!

It works on Substack. It works in the tiny little spots it has to occupy on the website and in the Substack app. It works in a profile where your readers check you out to see what you read. It WORKS! Did you know that? I didn’t until last Thursday.

Now, it’s my brand new offering to any client who’d like to up their game.

I’m all about calling attention to my stacks, and to myself. Annoying? A little. I used to be filled with shame, and never blew my own horn. I have a lot of catching up to do. Yes, I was the kid in the front row of every classroom (except math) who waved her hand wildly, “call on me, I know, I know!” For someone who considers herself mostly an introvert, this might not seem consistent with the traditional profile of an “innie.”

But, there you go. Life, and people, are full of contradictions.

Now, if you know me at all, you know that I can’t ever leave well enough alone. Because it’s never enough. I got to wondering, “Will it work on a welcome page? As a wordmark? In a post? Or an email banner?

It does! And, it’s suddenly made life at Style YOUR Stack a lot more interesting. It might make your stack more interesting, too. I always tell my clients that their stacks need to pop. To stand out. This’ll give anyone a boost. You don’t have do all the things. Maybe just your logo.

Or a divider? Or maybe, just maybe you’ll go for the whole shebang!

Of course, I curious after designing the logo. I built a new Welcome page image:

Yep. That works, too. How about a wordmark? I’m finding a simple one is best.

It IS possible to go overboard, especially if you’re me.

So far, I’ve done just one for a client, a new pal, Rosana Francescato, who writes a stack called Flower Child. How could I resist?

Her new logo:

Rosana will be in our April 18 story slam, too. Come see her tell her story in Death & Taxes!

Pronounce it anyway you like.

The creator of the format pronounced the acronym GIF which stands for Graphic Interchange Format (Graphic, hard G) as /dʒɪf/, with a soft g, with Wilhite stating that he intended for the pronunciation to deliberately echo the American peanut butter brand JIF, and CompuServe employees would often quip “choosy developers choose GIF”, a spoof of Jif’s television commercials.

However, the word is widely pronounced as /ɡɪf/, with a hard g, and polls have generally shown that this hard g pronunciation is more prevalent.

Adobe believes we should pronounce it “JIF.” That really messed me up last week. I’ve used the hard G for years. I valiantly tried to switch. JIF, GIF, JIF, GIF. Arrrggghhh!

I’ve always preferred Skippy Peanut Butter, over JIF, so that might be the problem.

Consider this post a gif-t!