SPOKOLOC: STICKERS & GIFS
A verified GIPHY channel built from scratch: over 280 million organic views, with no paid media.
As founder, illustrator and animator of Spokoloc, I make hand-drawn stickers and GIFs for group chats and DMs. Every one is drawn by hand, from first sketch to final animation. After 339 uploads, people around the world use them to say what words can’t.
PROBLEM
Most stickers feel generic. Chats needed ones with a voice.
SOLUTION
Hand-drawn GIFs and stickers with personality, short phrases and a style that’s recognisably one person’s.
BEHIND THE WORK
Challenges & Wins
Spokoloc started as a challenge I set myself. I wanted somewhere away from corporate work, where I could be as wild and free as my heart desired.
I started with how people speak. In South Africa, I explored all the different languages and slang people use. When I moved to the UK, I turned to the way Brits talk. Then I opened it up to the wider language of online culture. The stickers sound like real people because they’re built from real conversations. Every one is drawn by hand, in an original style inspired by the MTV I grew up watching in the 90s and 2000s.
There was no audience and no ad budget, so the work had to earn every share. It did, the way the best things spread. I made work I shared with my friends, they sent it to their friends, and friends of friends kept passing it on. Now it has over 280 million organic views, and the channel is verified on GIPHY.
Every time I see someone share one, or spot it out in the wild online, it brings me real joy to know a style I invented is out there in people’s chats.
