Slate: a tool to generate animated GIFs with text and a colored background

Animated GIFs are a bit like emojis, memes and lame jokes sent at 23:42 PM: you don't always need them, but they often do the job.

And when you want to convey a short message, a catchy phrase, or a visually appealing quote, you don't necessarily need to pull out Photoshop, After Effects, or some software that displays 47 buttons before you've even started. For that, there's Slate, a small online tool that allows you to Create animated GIFs very easily with text.

The principle is very simple: you type a sentence, choose a few options, and Slate transforms it all into an animation. The words appear one after another on a colored background, in a square format. It's simple, fast, a bit gimmicky… so it's definitely quite appealing.

No account required. No installation required. And no need to watch an 18-minute tutorial with electronic music playing in the background to understand how it works.

Some text, a background, and voilà, a GIF!

Slate isn't trying to impress. There are no hidden menus, no layers, no 3D effects that make your computer overheat. The tool focuses on one thing: transforming text into animated GIFs.

You begin by writing your text in the designated field. Obviously, it's best to avoid pasting your entire latest opinion piece. Slate works primarily with short sentences: a quote, a punchline, a quick message, a brief reaction to share somewhere.

Next, you can customize the appearance of the result. You choose the font, the text size, its color, and then the background color. Nothing too complicated, but enough to avoid producing the same GIF as everyone else.

And as always with this kind of tool, bad taste is technically possible. Fluorescent yellow text on an apple green background? Yes, you can. Is it a good idea? That's another question.

The most important thing is to maintain a minimum level of contrast. An animated GIF needs to be read quickly. If your text is illegible, too small, or lost in a strange color, your creation is likely to look more like a PowerPoint slide gone wrong.

The small adjustment that changes everything

Perhaps the most interesting setting is the scrolling speed. Slate lets you adjust the delay between each word, which completely changes the rhythm of the GIF.

Too short a delay, and your message flashes by. The result: no one has time to read it. Too long a delay, and the animation becomes sluggish, with that strange feeling of waiting for a toaster to finish toasting.

So, you have to experiment a bit. A short sentence can be quite quick. A longer sentence deserves more breathing room. And if you want to emphasize a message, it's best to give it time to develop on the screen.

This is also where the tool becomes fun. By changing two or three settings, you can go from a GIF that looks like an urgent alert to a short, almost theatrical message. All this just to display a few words in a colored square. The internet, sometimes, is wonderful.

Once you're happy with the result, simply save the image. The easiest way is usually to right-click on the generated GIF and then save it to your computer. You can then use it in an article, a message, a web page, or anywhere GIFs are accepted.

Slate is not intended to replace a real graphic design toolIt won't allow you to produce a highly polished animation, nor to create a visual worthy of an advertising campaign. But that's not its purpose.

Its appeal lies precisely in its speed. You arrive, type your text, tweak a couple of colors, adjust the speed, and leave with a animated GIF ready to be shared.

It's the kind of small tool that probably won't change your life, but it can be very useful for illustrating an idea, enlivening an article, or sending a message that's a little more original than a simple line of text.

In short, Slate does one thing, it does it simply, and then it lets you get back to what you were doing. Which, for a GIF generator with text, is already pretty good.

Slate