Many people suffer from outdated stereotypes, believing that illustration belongs exclusively to the realm of art and has nothing to do with business. (Tell that to Warner Brothers or Walt Disney Studios!) This archaic view holds your company back and makes it less profitable, because today digital illustration is a business.
So, let’s dispel these harmful misconceptions. Illustration is a marketing tool, no matter how beautiful and cute it may look. Its purpose is to promote business, provide information, and attract people.
Let’s look at the areas where illustrations are particularly effective. Perhaps some of these will be useful for your business.
- Branding
Many companies spend huge amounts of money to stand out from their competitors, attract attention, and build a customer base. Establishing an emotional connection and trust between your brand and your audience is a very difficult marketing task.
Using illustrations in advertising campaigns is a surprisingly simple and cost-effective solution.
Why? Illustrations are an excellent means of communication. Being visually concise, illustrations provide immediate recognition, simplify the understanding of complex things, strengthen trust, and are easy to remember. This is a psychological feature of human visual perception that all smart marketers are happy to use.
Any brand that uses illustrations gains uniqueness and character. Images can tell a company’s story in an engaging and informative way, appealing to the audience on an intuitive emotional level.
Illustrations are human. The deeper we dive into the digital rabbit hole, the more important these clusters of humanity become. Hand-drawn illustrations signal your willingness to treat your users with care and love, to treat them like people.
Illustrated logo
This is the best choice for startups, highly competitive companies, or any business that wants to be noticed and instantly recognized. For the average consumer, even the most beautiful name is nothing more than a set of letters that they will quickly forget or not understand (this is especially true for logos with acronyms).
An illustrated logo solves all these problems: it attracts attention, makes the offer obvious, and is visually memorable. The most popular are combined logos that include both an image and text.
Depending on the type of business and brand goals, the logo can be a clear abstract image or a complex detailed image.
- Advertising campaigns
Illustrated banners are a constant trend due to the peculiarities of human visual perception. A banner with a creative illustration is often more effective than a banner with a photograph. Why? Even the most minimalistic photographs contain many distracting details. You may focus on the beads of sweat on an athlete’s forehead or admire his muscles and not even notice that it is actually an advertisement for running shoes.
This does not happen with illustrations. Today’s illustrations mainly convey meaning rather than images. All possible distractions are eliminated. It is a message that goes straight to the heart.
Printed products
Illustrated business cards, booklets, flyers, catalogs, posters, and calendars can effectively and originally present your brand and make an unforgettable impression. Good images can make promotional materials so attractive that people will find it difficult to throw them away — or at least not right away. This way, they will keep your promotional materials for some time, which is in your best interest.
Illustrations can also be used to make branded souvenirs, such as printed T-shirts or caps, mugs, pens, notepads, etc.
- Online presence
It is becoming increasingly difficult to stand out from the competition on the Internet. Unique illustrations are a great way to make your company’s online presence memorable, whether it’s a website, landing page, or social media profile. Illustrations bring designs to life, spark interest in content, and establish an emotional connection with users. Custom illustrations increase website conversion rates by at least 7 times. They are targeted at a specific audience (i.e., customer-oriented), they engage emotionally, and they make the interface more user-friendly.
Illustrated characters, visual metaphors, your corporate identity, and the latest trends in digital illustration will all help your website design make a vivid and lasting impression on users.
Presentation of products or services
A presentation involves drawing attention to an object or information. Illustrations do this instantly, immediately winning over the audience.
If your product or service is difficult to describe in words, it should be illustrated. This will prevent the website from being overloaded with additional content and make the information easier to understand.
Illustrations are excellent salespeople for goods and services. And they work for free!
