3 ways to use illustration for unique branding
There’s a small business boom going on in Australia and worldwide. It’s predicted that over the next 10 years, another 3.5 million startups will be born!
We obviously think this is amazing, being a small biz ourselves, but it does beg the question, “how do you stand out from the ever-expanding crowd?”
One way to supercharge your branding is to use illustrations, especially original handmade illustrations. After all, fonts and colours can be replicated but an illustration that has been created by one actual human hand is one-of-a-kind.
Maybe you don’t associate illustrations with your brand. Maybe you see them as more appropriate for kidswear labels, tech-based platforms like Airbnb and Slack and creative businesses like Etsy.
However – and you heard it here first – there are 3 effective, evergreen ways that any business in any industry can use illustrations to leap out ahead of others.
Ooze brand personality, right down to the details, with custom icons
Icons are small graphic elements that are instantly understandable, such as the female and male bathroom symbol and the recycling arrow symbol.
For brands and businesses, icons can be used to simplify information, grab attention and build brand personality.
Instead of using already-existing iconography, having your own suite in your brand colours and customised style can help you attract, engage and delight customers.
After all, webpages like ‘Services’ are quite similar within a single industry; if a customer is researching different providers, scrolling through websites quickly becomes tedious. So, when they stumble across your page with branded icons, it’s going to be refreshing, more fun and much more memorable!
Branded icons can also be used when you are designing new assets, such as flyers, social media graphics and marketing emails, making life easier for you in a world that churns through content!
Aquapax supplies innovative bulk drinking water solutions to customers across Australia. Part of our illustration work for them included an icon library that is used across their website, social media and more. There are icons to communicate their commitment to a greener footprint with water usage, as well as to show the types of industries they work with. Circular edges and rounded shapes reinforce Aquapax’s value of sustainability.
Leave a killer first impression and build brand love with photogenic product packaging
Watch an unboxing video on TikTok or YouTube (that probably already has millions of views) and you won’t disagree that the customer experience starts with the packaging.
Nobody is going to post about your product if it comes in a boring brown paper bag – but they might if that brown paper bag has a striking custom print or a bright, bold illustrated sticker on it.
Branded illustrations can elevate your product packaging to create that “oh WOW!” moment for your customer. This is especially important when you remember that keeping repeat customers is less expensive than attracting new fans and that first impressions for first-time customers form in milliseconds; these first impressions can also stick, despite future experiences to the contrary.
If you’re still not convinced about the power of product packaging, think back to the last time you had to pick a wine – we’d put money on the fact that you probably picked the label you loved most!
We recently illustrated some quirky wine labels for Perth-based company, Winekind, who are “demystifying the wine bullsh*t” while “changing the world one sip at a time.”
To visually communicate the first part of their mission, the ‘I’ features a playful squiggle that pays homage to the corkscrew, and bright colours are used to stand out on the shelves and attract the youthful target market of 25 to 35-year olds.
The second part of Winekind’s mission sees the company using wine to spread kindness by donating 50% of profits to charity; we created the logo to visually bring “Wine” and “Kind” together.
We also love New Zealand’s Hawkshead Wine who appropriate 19th century artworks of birds as labels and of course, SA’s Little Giant who reached cult-like status thanks to their cute wombat mascot.
(Hawkshead Wine also has beautiful custom illustrated icons on their website for ‘Cart’, Facebook and Instagram!)
Make information-rich and onboarding processes visually engaging and actually enjoyable!
Your onboarding processes, similarly to your product packaging, play a big role in leaving a strong first impression on customers. They do this through making your customers feel set up to use your product or service and getting them stoked about the benefits.
Yet, it can’t be just us who impatiently click the “next” button during an online onboarding process or give a manual a cursory flip before putting it on the shelf (where it’ll sit for weeks before finally making it into the recycling bin). This usually happens when the flow is a long and formal snoozefest.
Illustrations combat this by adding visual storytelling to the process and communicating your messages quickly and in a fun way! For Matters of Taste, we created simple line illustrations for a process flow to explain what happens when customers order a fresh produce box – which is stocked with the best produce Western Australia has to offer, mostly direct from the farm gates! The illustrations are minimalist and refined, in muted earthy colours, to celebrate Matters of Taste’s commitment to truly fresh produce, sustainable practices and packaging and reducing food miles.
So where to start?
So our creative juices were flowing and we made a cootie catcher aka paper fortune teller to help you brainstorm how you can use illustrations in your business. In 3 steps, you’ll be met with a thought-starter like, “Simplify it with a GIF to add a little intrigue?”.
Want to have your branding fortune told?
Sign up get our Illustration Cootie Catcher today!
If you’d then like to hand it over to the experts, we’re ready with our tablets and stylus pens and sketch books and pencils. At Anema Designs, we create illustrations with strategy, personality and creativity in mind. We not only want your illustrations to look damn good – we also make sure they consider the more strategic elements, such as your business goals, the intention of the asset and your target audience.
To discover how we can use illustrations to share your unique story and vision, book a free consultation here.
Stay classy! ✌🏻
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