The Illustration Must Align with Brand Essence and Audience Appeal
Creating art that aligns with a company’s brand involves understanding the brand identity, values and target audience. Prior to any project it’s important to get thorough information about the company’s existing brand via brand book including mission statements, personality, target demographic and current visual style.
Next is the brainstorm and sketching phase where we create rough ideas of different concepts that reflect and align with the company brand. This is also a great time to experiment with pushing the visual brand even further.
New and exciting techniques, styles and technology are always being developed and as an illustrator/designer its my job to bring awareness of these new exciting trends to the table. In order to stay relevant in any field its important to continue and build on our skills including the visual extension of your field.
A great case study: we worked with one of our favorite brands Feel the Beat, a company whose mission is to make dance accessible to all by allowing those who are deaf and hard of hearing or those who identify with disabilities to literally feel the beat allowing them access to music.
The company already had a clear focus and target audience but recognized they were stuck with stock icons that worked but didn’t elevate the brand. We took the time to add unique dance icons showing accessibility that stock icons didn’t offer as well as fun, energetic illustrations of dancers of all sizes, abilities and backgrounds to be represented. These have now become a main staple used on all their digital and social ads making the brand feel more alive, dynamic and fun white still honoring their primary goal and style.
Case Study 2: Dance Ed Tips– A company that sparks creativity in dance teachers so they can make class fresh and exciting for their students through various card decks, games and resources.
We were so thrilled to work with them on creating a new card deck showing the correct techniques and beginner positions and poses of Ballet. This company has already put out countless technique decks and games utilizing the magic of illustration so it was imperative we review their past body of work.
They granted us the opportunity to share our thoughts on how to further improve upon their visuals. Ballet by nature is tied to strict, regimented movements that also inform a strict look and attire of its dancers. We thought this would be a great opportunity to break those stereotypes into this deck by allowing flexibility in its visual representation. We avoided the common pitfalls of using only feminine colors like pink and white and built a new gender neutral color scheme, additionally making these illustration examples with varying body types, shapes, ethnicities and gender fluidity.
This deck still lives in the same family as their previous work with simplistic line work yet adds a fresh visual perspective and layer of accessibility and representation.
Creating art that matches a company’s brand is an interactive process which innately requires communication and a few rounds of revisions to achieve the desired result. But keeping the brand’s mission and visual brand at the forefront its important, as an expert in our field to present new and exciting ideas that help develop its brand further without losing its original magic.
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