SpyreStudios

Web Design and Development Magazine

  • Design
  • Resources
  • Showcase
  • Inspirational
  • Tutorials
  • CSS
  • Resources
  • Tools
  • UX
  • More
    • Mobile
    • Usability
    • HTML5
    • Business
    • Freebies
    • Giveaway
    • About SpyreStudios
    • Advertise On SpyreStudios
    • Get In Touch With Us

Illustration Isn’t Dead. It’s Just Moved Online

March 7, 2016 by Spyre Studios

When we think of illustration, the first thing that comes to mind is children’s books. We tend to think of illustration as that stepping stone to real reading – simple, colorful pictures used as a tool to help move a story along for young minds as they try to sound out words and make sense of the text. Once they become stronger readers, the picture books go away.

Shirley Hughes, an award-winning author of more than fifty books and illustrator of over two hundred, condemns this view of illustration. “The idea that pictures are sternly removed from you as soon as you learn to read is a truly terrible one,” she told the Guardian back in 2009.

Illustrations were never intended to be used as a mere stepping stone to better textual comprehension. Hughes points out that Great Expectations and Sherlock Holmes both came to life as illustrations in magazine serials.The value illustrations bring to storytelling as standalone components is immeasurable.

Fast forward to today. The trend away from illustration has been reversed. In this hyper-digital age, we are inundated with information at all times from every direction. We’re so used to visual messaging that stock photos have fully lost their touch. We gloss right over them and wonder why we’re looking at pictures of strangers when the main goal of great user experience is for it to feel incredibly personalized.

Cue the resurgence of Illustration. Illustration is everywhere, and it will be one of the most powerful marketing tools for 2016. Illustrators are need for everything from designing smartphone apps to building major ad campaigns that include hand-drawn typography and mixed dimension animation. Today, the goal isn’t to use technology to create images devoid of imperfection. It is to use technology to help infuse an app or an entire ad campaign with personal touch.

Far from being sequestered to dusty children’s books, illustration is pushing new boundaries. Top illustrators are mixing mediums, working with animation, and re-injecting the homespun feel where for so many years we have been focused on perfecting the digital image. To help you stay up with the times, here are the illustration trends to watch in 2016.

Mixing Mediums

Cutting edge designers are blending illustration with photography, collage, and painting. Two pioneers leading the way are Joe Cruz and Hattie Stewart, both of whom are focused on challenging the hyper perfectionism of digital.

Cruz uses low tech materials to create mixed media ads for an impressive list of clients ranging from Adidas, Warner Music and Wired to the New York Times and Financial Times. Stewart, a self-proclaimed “professional doodler,” works with Marc by Marc Jacobs, Nike, Urban Outfitters, and Barney’s New York (to name just a few) to bring illustration to life on posters and magazine covers. We expect more and more illustration-photography combinations to come in the near future.

Flat, but with a twist

whatismaterial_environment_3d

Flat design has been around for awhile now, and it isn’t going anywhere. Why should it? It’s simple and eye-catching, which is exactly what users need in order to get (and stay) hooked on a screen. But just because it’s sticking around doesn’t mean it isn’t changing.

Google recently introduced Material Design, a set of design tools that focus on mixing the principles of flat design with the science of movement. These new design elements keep the illustration super flat but add some simple shadows and movement, creating a greater sense of reality for the user.

Hybrid Animation

Audiences have grown so used to over-the-top 3D CGI that it’s actually gotten quite boring. When 3D CGI modeling is mixed with 2D elements, however, the hybrid result is great at keeping our attention. In the coming year, we expect that this mix of dimensionality and flatness will really catch on. This combination of animation and illustration takes the best that technology has to offer and uses it to amplify our childhood fascination with simple drawings, bringing our imagination to life.

Monochromatic Palette

smartwater

There’s been a surge in demand lately for super minimal design. Part of this is paring down the color choices and turning to monochromatic palettes. This means illustrators are increasingly using a single base color and a variety of derivative shades and tints of that hue to create their design. This automatically gives the illustration a sense of harmony and simplicity that is both attention-grabbing and immediately easy to understand.

Hand-Drawn Typography

Consider hand-drawn typography the antidote to the super sleek technological age we live in. Illustrators are experimenting with different textures including chalks, inks, markers, and pencils on all sorts of material from paper to wood in order to inject a playful human touch into computer fonts.

For Diet Coke’s Re-Tweets of Love Campaign, fans were asked to tweet what they love about the soda. The winning tweets were transformed into hand-drawn “typography-as-images” that were then featured on Diet Coke cans.

tumblr_inline_nn7ovz8ps01qh5nd1_500

Sarah Coleman, one of the designers for the project and a self-described “inky mole,” explained the process of creating illustrative lettering: “I usually tell people it’s organic, irreverent, dark, silly, scratchy, changeable, energetic, made by hand, and there is a lot of it: to quote Marian Banjes: [Typography is] ‘Eclectic while still personally identifiable.’” If that doesn’t have personal, human touch all over it, we don’t know what does. We expect you’ll see a lot more in the way of handdrawn typography this year.

Shirley Hughes was right: getting rid of illustration is a terrible idea. 2016 is all about bringing it back, and doing so in new and innovative ways. It’s time to hire an illustrator.

Filed Under: Design Tagged With: flat design, illustrations, material design

Recent Posts

  • 31 Fresh Design Elements for Spring and Easter
  • 10 Templates for Music Concert Flyers
  • How to Build a Web Scraper Using Node.js
  • Best PHP Books, Courses and Tutorials in 2022
  • How to Get Your First Web Design Client

Archives

  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • June 2009
  • May 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • May 2008
  • April 2008

Categories

  • Accessibility
  • Android
  • Apps
  • Art
  • Article
  • Blogging
  • Books
  • Bootstrap
  • Business
  • CSS
  • Design
  • Development
  • Ecommerce
  • Fireworks
  • Flash
  • Freebies
  • Freelance
  • General
  • Giveaway
  • Graphic Design
  • HTML5
  • Icons
  • Illustrator
  • InDesign
  • Infographics
  • Inspirational
  • Interview
  • Jobs
  • jQuery
  • Learning
  • Logos
  • Matrix
  • Minimalism
  • Mobile
  • Motion Graphics
  • Music
  • News
  • Photoshop
  • PHP
  • Promoted
  • Rails
  • Resources
  • Showcase
  • Tools
  • Tutorial
  • Twitter
  • Typography
  • Uncategorized
  • Usability
  • UX
  • Wallpapers
  • Wireframing
  • WordPress
  • Work

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

SpyreStudios © 2022