By Laila Maline
Brand illustration is an important part of creating your brand’s image. Illustrations help produce a visual narrative and image for your brand that your audience can identify. Furthermore, the visual narrative of your brand forms an important part of your marketing and presence. If you want to learn how to create logos and other forms of brand illustration, keep on reading!
What is brand illustration?
Brand illustration is one of the main elements of a brand image, along with signature colors, fonts, and logos. It refers to the visual elements and graphics that form your brand image; these elements should be consistent, adaptable, and help your brand stand out. Brand illustration can come in the form of vectors, animations, characters, and images that establish your brand identity.
How do I create a brand illustration system?
Creating an illustration system can be a complex process that takes a lot of attention to detail and thought. Creating a logo using an illustrator is a common starting point, but you don’t always need technical knowledge to be successful at it. However, if you want to take it to the next level, you may consider hiring a graphic designer to create your brand illustration.
Hiring A Graphic Designer
When hiring graphic designers, you have a couple of options: hiring a freelance designer or an in-house designer. While it is often cheaper to hire freelance artists to create a brand illustration, having different freelance graphic artists work on different aspects of your brand image can lead to inconsistencies.
Hiring an in-house graphic designer can make the process of creating a brand illustration system more consistent. You will not need to explain your brand vision and identity to a new person each time. Your designer will know your brand identity well and can consistently create different designs.
Related: Fun Ideas Of Earth Illustrations To Use In Your Next Design
Doing Your Research
Whether you hire a graphic designer or take the illustration into your own hands, research is an essential component. You need to have a clear vision for your brand identity to create a working brand illustration system. Deciding on the right styles, colors, and fonts is critical in the process of creating a brand illustration system.
What is the message you want to send to your audience, and what should appeal to your target audience? Knowing your brand intimately and understanding your audience is a key step in creating an effective brand illustration system.
Understand Your Needs
- What kinds of illustrations will portray your message?
- What types of content do you need these illustrations for?
- Where will the brand illustrations be used or posted?
- What resolution and size must the designs be?
- Do the designs need to be adaptable to different platforms?
Creating Concept Designs and Illustrations
Once you are clear about the right images and the requirements for your illustrations, it is time to start creating! At this stage, the graphic designer creates concept designs and takes feedback to improve upon them until the right design is achieved. If you are designing yourself, you will want to create a logo using a design program. Communication is key here, and it requires patience to go through multiple design iterations.
Create A Brand Illustration Library
Once you have finalized your images, it is time to create a library of all the commonly used illustrations. This will help you speed up your workflow and generate content quickly.
Successfully creating your brand illustration system can be a long process, but is a necessary one. It will set your brand apart and help you make consistent and recognizable visuals.
Don’t have the technical expertise to use graphic design software? Simplified’s online tools make it super easy to make clean and beautiful designs for your brand!
