Custom illustrations are the engine for an out-of-the-box Branding project.
Let’s start from the beginning, what are custom illustrations?
Why can custom illustrations be crucial to a branding project?
- Differentiation: custom illustrations can help a brand stand out from the competition. They can create a unique visual identity that attracts the public’s attention and makes them more likely to remember the brand.
- Brand expression: illustrations can communicate a brand’s values, personality, and mission creatively and effectively. They can convey specific emotions, tones, and messages that words alone may fail to capture.
- Audience engagement: eye-catching illustrations can increase audience engagement. People are often more likely to interact with visual content than plain text, which can lead to greater participation and sharing on social media and other channels.
- Flexibility: illustrations can be used in a variety of contexts, including websites, social media, printed materials, packaging and more. This flexibility allows the brand to maintain visual consistency across all platforms and adapt illustrations to the specific needs of each channel.
- Memorability: well-designed illustrations can create a lasting impact in the minds of consumers. When illustrations are particularly memorable and associated with the brand, they can help strengthen brand awareness in the long run.
Cindy Pedone, illustrator with Larry Agency, gives us some helpful tips on illustrations.
Cindy has been drawing for as long as she can remember; she started drawing even before she learned to walk.
Her path to discovering drawing was all in all straightforward, because even as a child all I did was draw. As time went on, Cindy began to communicate through less traditional methods.
He did not want to make art but wished his work made more sense on a communicative level.
After attending Grafite, a school for graphic design, comics and illustration, Cindy began studying the basics of drawing, working out her own style and experimenting with various techniques until she digitized everything she produced.
What are custom illustrations used for in a Communication project?
The illustrations we make in Larry Agency, as Cindy confirms, are preparatory to advertising. Images certainly need to communicate and be the spokesperson for a message; it is not stylistic exercise. The same is true when we create a mascot.
We should not confuse art with custom illustrations for advertising.
If art meets the need to create a feeling, in advertising, on the other hand, the priority is not necessarily to generate a feeling, at least in the initial stage; the priority is to generate a message that is understandable to the user.
3 things to keep in mind when making illustrations for an advertising campaign.
1. Recognizability.
Recognizability allows the Brand to tell a unique story through images that cannot be reproduced and never seen. Therefore, we prefer not to use database images that many companies are accustomed to in creating their Brand Visual Identity. The risk is to look all the same.
2. Identity also comes through copy
An illustration without good copy is not functional. It is the textual content created for the image that completes the job.
3. The effect you want to generate
Any creative activity without a goal is an end in itself. Before we start working on the Brand Identity (link to page) of a company, we make sure we are clear about the effect the Brand wants to generate on the audience and, consequently, its purpose.
