Animated GIFs have become so huge. They're everywhere. But why? On the surface, they're pretty silly—a few frames of video, endlessly looping in time. There are GIFs of Star Trek's Picard facepalming, ...

While animated GIFs have trampled over still images, Flash animations, and even in some cases video clips as a way to inject multimedia pizazz into text-based content, animated illustrations remain a ...