Animate SVG with CSS: A Step-by-Step Guide

Unlock the Power of Web Animations with SVG and CSS

Web animations are more than just eye candy; they can significantly enhance user experience by providing visual feedback, guiding users through tasks, and improving overall website interactivity. In this article, we’ll explore the creation of simple and scalable animations using SVG and CSS.

Common Use Cases for Animating SVG with CSS

SVGs fit smoothly into various situations, offering impressive flexibility in preserving graphic quality when scaled. Here are some practical use cases for static and animated SVGs:

• Icons: Ideal for creating adaptable and scalable iconography for modern apps, offering superior animation possibilities over icon fonts and PNG image icons.
• Data Visualizations: Use SVGs to create clean, scalable, dynamic, and highly customizable charts, graphs, and diagrams.
• Interactive States: Integrate SVG illustrations into a product to streamline tasks like generating, adding, or removing data, enhancing user-friendliness.
• Stickers and Emojis: Perfect for crafting animated stickers and emojis, bringing dynamic and expressive elements to an application.

Preparing SVGs for Animation

To create effective animations, it’s essential to prepare your SVGs properly. Here are some tips:

• Optimize the SVG code by removing redundant tags and metadata using tools like SVG Cleaner.
• Create intentional groupings using the <g> tag for organized structuring and collective transformation or animation.
• Be mindful of the stacking order, as SVG shapes are painted sequentially from top to bottom.

Applying CSS to SVGs

There are four ways to apply CSS to SVGs:

1. Inline CSS approach: Add CSS styles to any part of the SVG using the style attribute.
2. Using the CSS @import rule: Reference and import an external CSS stylesheet within the SVG.
3. Writing styles directly within the SVG: Enclose styles within the CDATA section to prevent potential conflicts with XML parsing.
4. Writing styles in an external CSS file: Consume the SVG files in the documents that include them, and the SVGs will automatically get styled depending on the document.

What Can You Animate with CSS?

CSS enables you to create dynamic visual effects by animating various properties. Here are some demos showcasing the power of pure CSS animation:

• Hamburger menu icon: Transform a static SVG into a dynamic hamburger menu icon that changes into a close icon upon hover.
• Rotating loader or spinner: Create a rotating ring in SVG for loading screens using CSS keyframes.
• Morphing bars loader: Explore another loader with a pulsating effect by morphing rect elements from left to right.
• Creating a line drawing animation: Utilize stroke properties effectively to achieve a line drawing effect in SVG.
• Animated illustration: Combine pre-made SVG illustrations and icons to create something unique.
• Fade-in-out text: Achieve a fade-in and fade-out text animation similar to a blinking text effect in HTML with CSS.
• Wavy SVG text: Create a wavy text animation resembling a bouncy text effect.

More Tools for Animating SVGs

While animating SVGs with only CSS has limitations, various tools simplify the process significantly:

• SVG.js: A lightweight JavaScript library for manipulating and animating SVGs.
• Vivus.js: A JavaScript class with no dependencies that enables SVG animation.
• mo.js: Aimed at motion graphics on the web, offering fast and robust animations through its API.
• Framer Motion: A production-ready animation library for React with a declarative syntax.
• Animate.css: A collection of pre-made CSS animations you can copy and paste into your workflow.
• GSAP: Provides premium access to animate nearly everything you can select with JavaScript.
• SVGator: A paid tool that simplifies the animation task with SVGs through its UI.

By mastering the techniques outlined in this article, you’ll be able to bring static SVGs to life using just a bit of CSS. Explore the world of web animations and discover endless inspiration online!