Custom Illustration - A Powerhouse Marketing Tool
Why Illustration?
As designers, we live for design trends. They further help us sell our work by pitching ideas that are currently accepted and praised in the marketplace. There are several resources out there we use to stay inspired, finding fresh ideas and concepts to apply to our work. I mean, why reinvent the wheel?
We are constantly on the lookout for what hot ticket we can apply to our own practice, further expanding our ideas, adopting solutions that we know alrady work. Is design really a turn-key solution for success?
By shifting the mindset from a company-oriented ethos to consumer driven, empathic culture, we can develop a greater sense of trust and recognition otherwise bereft in competitor products. How are companies and brands currently using these design trends to further differentiate themselves from competitors in a sea of competition?
The Hot Ticket
Long gone are the days of bevels, drop shadows and outer glow effects. We’ve since seen a huge resurgence in clean and minimal design, incorporating custom illustration, simple color palettes, punchy colors and clean gradients (Thanks Stripe!). Photo elements have since fallen off in favor of this new aesthetic, after all, how is this generic group of individuals supposed to perfectly embody your brand? They single out audiences and will most likely cost you your dignity. Choose wisely.
Who’s Who
With these recent trends, we see more and more companies using design to differentiate their brand in the marketplace. If we think back on design-centric companies such as Apple, Coca-Cola and Nike, we see a significant market advantage from competitors. Nike largely dominates competitors such as Reebok and Adidas. These companies ignored the potential of a design-centric culture and have since fallen behind. Nike’s marketing, brand recognition and unity makes us as consumers feel like our money is well spent. It exudes quality, style, and popularity.
Brands ranging from Dropbox, Intercom and Shopify are turning to custom illustration as meaningful representation, creating a deeper sense of customer connection with the brand. Custom illustration can create a deeper representation, encompassing a brand as a visual identity rather than just decorating your website’s header image.
Why Design?
These design centric companies place importance on the role of visual branding and representation. When companies are inclined to enhance their customer facing identities, it does not go unnoticed. This interesting excerpt written in 2014 by DMI, the Design Management Institute, Michael Westcott, the writer of the article states that “over the last 10 years design-led companies have maintained significant stock market advantage, outperforming the S&P by an extraordinary 228%”.
“Over the last 10 years design-led companies have maintained significant stock market advantage, outperforming the S&P by an extraordinary 228%”
— Michael Westcott (DMI, Design Management Institute)
Evidently, visual representation matters. Design is about solving problems, creating a clear and concise visual communication between brand and customer. It’s our job to hear out your ideas, vision and personality and translate that to paper so to speak. We’re here to be your creative voice. No opportunity lost.
What Problem Does Illustration Solve?
So what problem does illustration solve? It currently fills a design void once filled by generic stock photography completely bereft of creativity. With illustration, literally anything is possible. Having trouble finding a circus elephant on a backdrop of personified peanut characters? Great! Anything is possible with a little imagination.
Photographs and stock iconography isn’t quite the creative sauce it used to be. It does not create an identifiable mental trigger to consumers. With effective execution and implementation, in can dissolve much of the creativity ambiguity of open-ended design in regards to marketing collateral and campaigns including ad campaigns, landing pages, etc.
Process
The unfortunate reality about custom illustration that it inevitably takes time, effort and a lot of canned ideas. Finding an effective visual solution in within 2–3 hours isn’t going to help your brand, especially if you aren’t able to effectively communicate your ideas or feedback.
There are multiple components to considering while developing a custom illustration style:
Overall Style — Are there any existing styles you like? Have seen? Want to? Unfortunately, mono-line icons won’t cut it here. Let’s create something memorable.
Color Palettes — Do you have established brand guidelines, including a wide range of usable colors? Just a few colors? We’ll need to work to find a suitable color combination with plenty of contrast and connection to the original brand.
What are some of the key concepts, motifs, and patterns? Are there trees? Mountains? We’ll want to create a consistent visual style for all of these elements to eliminate any open-ended interpretation for future illustrations.
Character Design — Not always necessary but with most human-centric brands, character design plays an essential role. How exactly will the characters be personified? Are there any example styles in place? Left Field or realistic and rigid? Let’s figure that out!
How can we define these set styles, colors and execution? Let’s create some consistent guidelines to execute consistently, every time.
Final Notes
If you’re interested in learning more about successful illustration implementation, take a look at some existing Medium articles by Michael Jeter, representing Dropbox as Illustration Lead or the following Shopify blog post by Meg Robichaud, defining and elaborating on the execution of Shopify’s brand vision.
Illustrations can be more than just a pretty picture for your blog or website. Illustration is about taking limitless possibilities, honing in on a usable style that matters to your customers, builds trust, and creates a deeper, personal representation. This inevitably takes time and lots of coffee so empty those paper bins and get ready to dig in for the long haul.
