Custom illustration can be a very powerful tool that has many strengths over stock art. A designer can easily change colors, positioning, style or create animation from a custom illustration. They can be light-hearted or cartoony, or they can be a bit more serious like these examples. And if you work in vector like these examples, you can easily scale the images without sacrificing quality.

This logo is not actually huge and sitting in Santiago, Chile. But the imagery here can have a real impact. Simple photo manipulations like these can be an engaging way to grab a viewer’s attention. When you create something subtle like this, it doesn’t take much to imagine that it may be real and give pause to a viewer.

This was a piece on information security. In this example of the piece, I replaced sensitive information with censor bleeps. It was a simple solution and creates an effect I found to be humorous and so thought it would be an amusing way to share this on my site. The original piece has no intentional humorous qualities. I also added some joke credits at the end. In the actual piece, it simply displays a “more information can be found at…” text.

Designing for a concept can be a real challenge for a designer. You might only have a phrase or even a couple words to work with. When you can hear what your client is trying to say and deliver a visual that provides the same message as their concept or theme, you can add much strength to that message.