3D Illustration Trends
3D has been around for a while now in the design world. Just recently I notice that a specific style has been gaining a lot of traction over the past year or so. To me, it feels like a spin on 2D flat design but now brought into 3D. The softness of the colors and realistic look of the overall design is what piques my interest. Below are some curated images I’ve gathered from Dribbble to demonstrate my thoughts.
Here’s a great example of a common product in anyone’s fridge — an ice cream sandwich. Look at how tastefully (no pun intended :P) this design is done in 3D. The emotions it evokes, in this case, hunger, serve well by how detailed the ice cream sandwich is. Mixed in with the angled perspective further enhances the overall effect of being something you can grab and eat. Yummy.
In this case, 3D is used as a neat character design of a dog using a mobile device. Illustrations like this combined with UI/UX does so much for the overall look and feel of any project. It’s great eye candy but the polish of this design only enhances what’s around it. Usually a title and small descriptive sub-text with a good amount of negative space. Just like that and you already have a great start at any visual project.
Here are great examples of 3D elements that can be sprinkled around say a landing page. As a group, it works well because of complementary colors and a consistent design language. The flip side is that you can break them apart into 2 to 3 grouped images and spread them throughout a page or even multiple pages. Two-three years ago this would be mostly 2D artwork but I’m glad designers are adopting the 3D style. It looks more modern and up-to-date in my opinion.
One of my favorite trends so far this year is seeing real-life humans illustrated into 3D cartoon counter-parts. It’s such an aesthetically pleasing design and is a great break from photo-realistic images of people. I can only imagine the amount of time it took to draw this from scratch and then turn it into a 3D illustration but the overall feel gives off such an exciting new look that will age well and was definitely worth the time investment to create.
So there you have it. Some examples of 3D designs that will hopefully inspire you to come up with designs of your own and implement them into your projects. I have an inclination that this trend is here to stay will only evolve to other aspects in design like UI neumorphism. Happy designing!
Contributor’s Bio
Michael Dang is a Designer at Echobind with over eight years of professional experience in graphic, web, and UI design.
