Illustration? Isn’t that something you find in children’s books?

While hearing “illustration” most people think about children’s books, the world of illustration is so much broader. Try to go around one day with the “illustration focus” in your mind and you’re going to see them everywhere: in newspapers and magazines, on websites, on products, in social media, apps, podcast covers, in advertising, on posters, all kinds of books, book covers…and I could go on forever.

Illustration (and animation) have become incredibly popular in the last few years and today I want to share the reasons of why that happens.

Illustration makes your brand stand out

Probably the most obvious and well known reason to choose illustration for your business is that illustration is an art form that will make you stand out. While, of course, photography is also an art form, we’ve gotten so used to stock photography on websites that in many cases it just doesn’t speak to us as emotionally, as an individual illustration does. There’s a such variety of stiles and executions of illustrations out there that a client can certainly find one fitting the purposes of what they need: from whimsical, to modern, hand drawn to graphic, one line to 3d - illustration can capture the stile of your brand and elevate it with its wow factor.

Check out just a few examples of big companies using illustration to stand out:

Illustration captures the invisible

While choosing between illustration and photography can still be a matter of personal taste, the next feature of illustration cannot be denied: illustration can show the invisible. Let me give you some examples straight away: how about photographing heartbreak? Or the coronavirus for that matter? There’s so many things that want to be shown but cannot be captured by a camera or words:!

One example in my portfolio is what I did for Revox. Revox has a multiroom audio systems where the speakers are build into the walls…try capturing and explaining this product to your customers. Here’s what we’ve done with it:

Test to go website - Berlin free Covid testing centres

Illustration is independent

Let me explain this to you with an example of a request I once got. This brand wanted me to illustrate big outdoor garden scenes with people working on different things. It was more convenient for them to explain the scenes to me and let me draw them than to find the spaces, models, photographer, stage everything and do a shooting. Honestly it was just faster and cheaper this way and while this absolutely isn’t my favorite reason to illustrate something…it might be the reason your company is looking for an illustrator.

If you want a very specific looking person on your website or product, it will probably be easier to illustrate that than to find such a person in reality. Or you want a scene that would be only possible to get in photography post-production and you don’t like the feel of that, illustration is your friend!

Last but not least: People crave visual marketing

Infographic are so much easier for our brains to absorb and digest than words are. There are tons of scientific evidence showing that brains process images better than text. Plus, images are more enganging, persuasive and accessible to humans than information in text form.

So many brands and companies use this knowledge and create visual marketing. Here are just a few examples:

To sum up there are many reasons to choose illustration for your company, brand, product or website, I’ve just gotten into a few of them today. And those reasons are also the reasons why I love to be an illustrator.
If you want to discuss the possibilities of elevating your business with illustration, feel free to contact me!

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