Today we learned about illustration, and how it can be anything. There are lots of different tools that can be used to illustrate, such as pen and paper, fax machines, photocopiers, digital, or painting. There are plenty of creative ways to illustrate, so the possibilities are limitless with illustration. Illustration can be used to communicate thoughts in a way that isn’t text, making it more engaging to look at. As designers it is important to look at a range of different styles and mediums to find inspiration for our work, instead of jumping straight to software. In todays class we look at illustration from hand to mouse.
Using older methods of illustration can be very useful, even when using them to support digital work. One way that using physical illustration styles is by using it to inspire your work, and give you ideas that you wouldn’t find digitally. An example of this is going to an art gallery and looking at paintings to inspire you on how colours are used or composition. Some methods that would be considered older or pre-digital would be painting, drawing, textile, fax, collage, and photocopy.
Our primary way of illustrating today as designers is digital. This is because we can now make things quicker than we ever have, and it is a lot easier to get more copies and for designs to be accessible to everyone. There are some tools that are most commonly used by designers such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Figma, and Procreate. These softwares are all useful for their own purpose, and being able to use all of them will put you ahead of the game in design.
Paul Elliman is an artist from the UK, and his designs contain normal physical objects that are used in everyday life. He is very creative for what he uses in his designs and as you can see from below he has designed an alphabet from everyday objects, which I think is very unique and something that I would never have thought of doing. Something that I can learn from him as a designer is to use the world around you as inspiration, and to not be afraid of using physical objects to help me develop my ideas.
Olly Moss is an illustrator from the UK, and he specialises in using a tablet for his work. His work is very good as while it looks excellent, it also sets the mood of what his work is about, as you can see the King Kong poster looks very intimidating and daunting, while the Firewatch poster looks calm and peaceful. He has a very distinct style and while they are very good, they are simple in that he uses shapes and adds detail from there. His movie and video game posters are definitely his speciality as he is able to represent them well in his style. He is an extremely talented illustrator and I am a big fan of his work.
Illustration is not only something that is used for art and posters, but can be used in the Interaction design industry. It is used to make apps more engaging to the users and can also give them more of an emotional connection to the app. It is another way to communicate an idea, but in a way that isn’t text. These can be icons, drawings or photos. They should be reusable, and fit the theme of the design system. They should serve the purpose of making the experience for the user better than worse. Some good examples of illustration in UX and UI is the Uber app, which has illustrations for icons such as cars, calendars and food. They serve the purpose of making the app easier to navigate. This website was very useful for helping me understand how to use illustration in UI/UX. https://www.nomensa.com/blog/when-consider-ux-illustration-experience-design/
Todays class was very interesting as I learnt about something that I had never really thought about before, which was illustration, and how it has developed and even how it can be used in Interaction Design. Illustration is not something that I would be talented at but when it is broken down it doesn’t seem as hard as I thought it would be. I would definitely say that when an app uses illustrations that it adds more character to it and creates an emotional connection, so it was cool to learn a bit about it and it is something that I could maybe incorporate into my work.