Sometimes we are confidently cruising on the cutting edge of creativity, seamlessly delivering on those promises, but there are times when we find ourselves stuck in the mud, when we cannot find the perfect balance between getting things done the right way, and getting them done fast, at least not as fast as the clients want.
That’s when we seek refreshment in side projects. They are like design pitches, unique ideas and projects that are totally ours, independent of clients’ needs and deadlines. Side projects can significantly boost collaboration and team atmosphere at your agency or your team. We always had great ideas about side projects, but sometimes it seems it’s never a good time to actually start working on them.
That’s where being a CEO helps. One day I woke up and decided this is the time, the time for all of us to have some fun, doing something cool, almost silly. Designers, front-end developers, back-end developers, we all pitched in and the result was instant joy and happiness around the agency.
So, what did we build?
Here’s a short background story.
We’ve always liked to party. So, every few months we would organize a big party at the agency, where we would invite our friends, colleagues and clients to get down, get drunk and boogie with us, usually with the help of a live band or a DJ.
Just recently we moved into a new office space, a renovated old railway warehouse, which is now packed with big screen TVs, monitors and projectors that we use to spice up our parties with YouTube videos and all kinds of video material that we’ve gathered during the years from who knows where.
But, we wanted more.
We asked ourselves, why don’t we put all that technology to better use? Wouldn’t it be great to kick the atmosphere up a notch by displaying a Leonardo Di Caprio Cheers animation while playing a Kool And The Gang track? Or a retro animation spicing up an awesome 80s mix? And wouldn’t it be even better if you could switch animations on the fly, by using a computer or your mobile device?
Yes. Yes, it would be great.
Meet .gifdancer
We decided to harness the power of Giphy.com and use its huge database of gif animations to let you party the way you want to. Just type in your keyword, beam an endless, random stream of gif animations onto your wall and watch your get-together reach another level. Get wild, try out different keywords and have fun watching what .gifdancer picked out for you.
And that’s about it. We took a simple connection to Giphy’s API, added a bit of design, a spoon of front-end development and our recipe for a cool project was ready to use and share with the world.
In the end, while we were working on the project (mostly during night-shifts) we had all kinds of ideas and funny moments and .gifdancer helped us connect even better than during our ordinary, everyday routine.
Even after the site was launched we wanted to add more stuff to it. Playful spirits that we are, we added some cool Easter eggs (e.g. try typing in “messi”), detailed statistics and geoanalytics, some cool svg animations on icons and we upgraded and improved the UX and UI. We even fulfilled some popular requests and added YouTube support, so now you can add music to your animation streams.
Most importantly, we had a really good time working on it.
So why don’t you check out .gifdancer for yourself and give it a spin? If you’re planning a party, even better. It’s time to do some .gifdancing and, who knows, maybe you’ll get a creative kick and start your own side project!
