You’ve created an amazing flipbook with an authentic reading experience and a smooth page flip effect—but what if you could make it even better? Step up your flipbook game by adding a stunning background, lively GIFs, and captivating videos.
The best part? You don’t need to be a professional designer to implement interactive features. In this guide, we’ve gathered the top tools and resources that make creating GIFs, videos, and backgrounds easier than ever. Let’s get started!
Use Enticing Backgrounds
A well-chosen background can elevate your flipbook, adding visual appeal and strengthening your brand identity. Whether you select an industry-specific design or one that complements your content, the right background will make your flipbook stand out and help increase brand recognition. Here's how to add the perfect background to your flipbook.
🖼️Choose from FlippingBook’s gallery of backgrounds
No time for custom design? No problem! You can choose a professionally-looking background in FlippingBook, saving time and effort. FlippingBook offers more than 50 backgrounds, ranging from sleek and business-like to elegant and artistic for any case or industry. Check out how our Sunset Pastels background complements the theme and colors of the flipbook and gives it a vibrant presence.
🖼️Upload your branded background
For a more personalized touch, upload your own background to ensure your flipbook matches your unique brand. If you already have branded materials in your marketing, this is the perfect way to boost your brand visibility across all the channels. This feature is available starting with the Optimal plan.
🖼️Find a stock image
Need a background but don’t have one on hand? You can find high-quality free stock images from various platforms. Just be sure to always double-check the license for each image, as some might have specific restrictions or require attribution depending on the platform or the creator's terms.
- Unsplash: Offers a wide range of high-resolution photos that are free to use for personal and commercial projects with no attribution required.
- Pexels: A large collection of free stock photos and videos. The images are licensed under a Pexels license, which allows for free use, including commercial purposes, with no attribution required.
- Pixabay: Provides over 1.7 million free stock photos, illustrations, vectors, and videos. All content can be used for commercial purposes without attribution.
- Burst (by Shopify): A platform with high-quality images, especially geared toward entrepreneurs and business needs. They offer free images for commercial and personal use.
- StockSnap.io: A huge collection of beautiful, free stock images. All images on StockSnap are released under the Creative Commons CC0 license, so no attribution is required.
🖼️Create your own background
Imagine the joy of crafting your own beautiful backgrounds without needing a professional designer. Thanks to intuitive design tools, this has become easier than ever. We’ve compiled a list of tools that offer the ideal mix of simplicity and functionality—perfect for beginners, yet robust enough for advanced users. Many of these tools offer free versions, though you may also find premium features behind a paid plan.
- Canva: Best for graphic design, social media posts, presentations, infographics, and more. Canva is very user-friendly and offers millions of stock photos, templates, fonts, and icons. Allows collaboration, image editing, and easy downloading.
- Adobe Express: Best for all kinds of graphics and illustrations. Adobe Express is very simple, with customizable templates, stock photos, design assets, and a comfortable interface.
- Visme: Best for infographics, presentations, social media graphics, reports, and more. Visme is easy to use, with a drag-and-drop interface that makes it a convenient tool for beginners and more advanced users alike to create professional designs.
💡These tips are relevant for creating pop-up image galleries in your flipbook as well! If you need to find or craft images for your gallery, the same tools and resources work perfectly.
And now let’s talk about the interactive elements you can empower your flipbooks with. First, check out our video on how to wow your readers right away with interactivity!
According to our survey on user engagement, readers interacted more with the flipbook interface after we added interactive elements to the content. Most metrics (downloads, sharing, and logo clicks) show a positive trend—52.6% positive and 28.1% neutral. Thus, integrating interactive elements in your flipbooks can improve user engagement with content, making it more enticing and recognizable.
💡Read our blog post on How to Use Interactivity in FlippingBook to Boost Your Content Engagement.
Embed Engaging Videos
According to Video Marketing Statistics 2025 by Wyzowl, video as a tool is used by 89% of businesses and is considered integral to the marketing strategy of 95% of marketers—an all-time high. So what can give your flipbook an even more interactive experience than adding a video to it?
FlippingBook allows you to embed pop-up and inline videos, hosted on YouTube (including YouTube Shorts), Vimeo, or Wistia to your flipbooks. Adding videos is available in the Optimal plan and higher. For instance, see how authentic a video looks in this lovely guide.
📹Find a stock video
Don't have a videographer on your team, but need to include videos in your flipbook? Several platforms are offering free stock videos for both personal and commercial use. Be sure to check the licensing details on each platform to ensure you comply with any attribution or restrictions. Here are some of the best sources for finding high-quality stock footage:
- Pexels: Offers a wide range of free stock videos in various categories. All videos are licensed under the Pexels License, meaning you can use them for personal and commercial purposes without attribution.
- Pixabay: Thousands of free stock videos, including animations and timelapses. Videos are free to use for personal or commercial projects under the Pixabay License.
- Videvo: Offers both free and premium stock video footage. The free videos come with different types of licenses, so be sure to check the licensing terms before using them.
- Shutterstock (Free section): While Shutterstock is known for its premium content, it does offer a selection of free stock footage.
💡Want to create your own video? Check out our blog post on Tools for Making and Editing Videos to find the perfect product for your needs.
Add Compelling GIFs
GIFs are an excellent way to breathe life into your flipbook, adding dynamic movement and visual interest. They’re easy to incorporate and can help convey complex ideas, emotions, or instructions with clarity. You can upload a GIF or add it via a link right from the platform. Adding GIFs is available in the Advanced plan and higher. See for yourself and flip through the pages of this booklet, full of gorgeous GIFs. You can even place a GIF on the cover to catch you readers' attention right away!
📽️Find a ready-made GIF
If you're looking to include some pre-made GIFs in your flipbook, there are plenty of websites where you can find high-quality, ready GIFs in various categories. Here are some of the best platforms for finding GIFs:
- Giphy: Offers a wide variety of GIFs for almost any occasion, including memes, reactions, and creative animations. Giphy is one of the most popular platforms for GIFs. You can search by keywords, categories, and even upload your own GIFs.
- Tenor: Tenor has a vast library of GIFs, especially focused on funny, emotional, and conversational content for any case.
- Imgur: Imgur hosts a wide range of funny GIFs, and its user community frequently uploads and shares new GIFs. You can also create GIFs from videos directly on the site.
📽️Create a GIF
The easiest way to create a GIF is by making it from images or videos. We recommend using Canva, an easy web design tool, for this task. Read our step-by-step guide on creating GIFs in Canva to learn all the details.
Apart from Canva, there’s a wide variety of online GIF creators, but not all of them focus on making GIFs from both images and videos. Plus, if you are a beginner, you’ll need an animated GIF tool that is easy to use and has features that can help you make nice-looking GIFs even without being a professional designer. So we’ve gathered a list of the ones that allow you to do that—check them out and choose what suits you best.
- Giphy’s GIF Maker: Very simple and intuitive tool. Just upload a video or a set of images, and Giphy will automatically turn them into a GIF. It allows you to trim videos, add captions, and stickers to your GIFs. It's great for beginners and integrates with the Giphy platform for easy sharing. You can also decorate your GIF with a caption, stickers, filters, and freehand drawing. To make GIFs in Giphy, you have to create a user account.
- Make A GIF: Make A GIF lets you create an animated GIF from multiple images, a YouTube or Facebook video, a video from your computer, or one taken directly from your webcam. It allows you to rearrange the image order using its simple drag-and-drop interface. If you want to remove a watermark or make GIFs longer than 10 seconds, you need to create an account, otherwise, you can create GIFs without signing up. High-quality GIFs are available with a Premium plan.
- ezgif.com: ezgif helps you craft animated GIFs by combining separate image files as frames. You can make high-quality GIFs free of watermarks or attribution. You can also upload your own videos from your computer or smartphone, or add a URL to make animated GIFs. Don’t forget to download the GIF when finished as there’s no online save option in ezgif.
And there you have it! We hope this article gives you the inspiration and tools to make your flipbooks even better.
