In today’s competitive market, brands are constantly seeking ways to stand out and create more authentic connections with their audiences. An effective way to do this is by incorporating illustration into your brand’s visual identity. Illustration brings a unique human touch to your messaging, making it more relatable and engaging. By bringing personality and creativity into your brand, illustrations can communicate complex ideas in a playful and accessible manner, fostering a stronger sense of connection with your audience.
Let’s explore how illustration can help humanise your brand, enhance storytelling and set the tone for your brand’s personality.
Humanising Your Brand
Bringing illustration into your brand’s visual identity is a great way to help create relatability and authentic connections with your audience. Illustration can help to express brand messaging playfully and engagingly and in turn, communicate to your audience on a deeper, more personal level.
Headspace is a great example of a brand using illustration to create human connections. The playful shapes and faces help to express complex ideas around mental health in an accessible way; this is the messaging at the core of Headspace’s branding. As their purpose is centred around humans, their illustration style reflects this.
Storytelling
Brand illustration can be a great method of storytelling, whether that be through origin stories or communicating narratives that are tricky to express through words. This can give your brand more freedom over how you portray your messaging and can give you the ability to create brand ambassadors and mascots for greater brand recognition.
Setting Tone & Personality
Illustration is a powerful tool for setting tone and personality. By using different styles and colour palettes, different emotions and meanings can be created. For example, using bold shapes and colours to create an energetic personality or delicate illustrations with muted colours to create calm.
Ben & Jerry’s has established itself as a playful and ethically minded business since it was founded in the 70s. They push this narrative largely through their bold illustration style. Their informal use of bright colours and symbols such as peace signs refer to their mission and heritage as a brand in an iconic and recognisable way.
Differentiation
Using illustrations to make your brand stand out is an excellent way to create unique and memorable advertising materials. Distinctive, bespoke illustrations can help set your brand apart from the competition. Consumers are more likely to remember a brand with engaging illustrations that effectively represent its values.
Two great examples of brands that use illustration to differentiate themselves are Bolt and Mailchimp. Bolt’s vibrant and energetic illustration style reflects the fast-paced nature of its brand messaging, emphasising movement and dynamism.
Mailchimp, on the other hand, employs a quirky, hand-drawn illustration style. This approach adds a human touch to their branding, with characters that simplify complex business processes in an accessible way. As a result, their brand feels more approachable and relatable.
Content Quality
As illustration is a purely visual medium it will naturally catch people's attention, especially in fast-paced digital environments. It can create extra interest in important marketing materials such as newsletters, brochures and website landing pages.
Additionally, high-quality, polished illustrations elevate your brand image, demonstrating attention to detail and creativity. They can position your business as professional and approachable, leaving a lasting impression on your audience.
In conclusion, using illustration in your brand’s visual identity is a great way to make your messaging more relatable, fun and human. It helps to tell your brand’s story in a way that feels personal and engaging, while also making complex ideas easier to understand. Whether you’re creating a connection through playful visuals like Headspace or bold, iconic designs like Ben & Jerry’s, illustration lets you uniquely express your brand’s personality.
When you bring illustration into the mix, you’re able to give your brand a voice that your audience can connect with. It’s an opportunity to make your message stand out, tell your story, and build a stronger bond with the people who matter most.
