What is illustrative design? - Illustrator Tutorial

- [Instructor] Illustrative design, is best shown than explained. So let's take a look at the difference between graphic design and illustrative design. So first, we're going to look at graphic design. I'm just going to select these three circular shapes here, focus on the middle one. And we're going to go ahead and align that to center like this, we'll select these two shapes and using Pathfinder, we're going to minus front, select both shapes and color red. And what we have now, is the company Target's brand mark. Graphic design doesn't have to be complicated. The most effective graphic design is simplified iconic forms and shapes. If you're talking in the context of brand identity, that is. And this is a good example, a very well-known brand mark, but not very complicated to build at all as you saw there. Now, there's other types of brand marks out there, here's Nike. Nike, essentially, could just be two shapes, so you could minus front and then we can color it gray. And you have this classic mark well-known throughout the world. And this is a good example of both Target and Nike being what I would consider primary examples. They're in the forefront of what people recognize as logos as graphic design. These aren't illustrative, they're based off a geometric shapes and forms and not too difficult to create and pull together in vector form. So, these two are what I would consider graphic design. Here's an example, probably the best example because of its recognition globally as an illustrative design. And that would be Starbucks. Now, what do I mean by illustrative design? Well, to create this brand mark, at some point it took some drawing. It took people figuring out, okay, how do we form this? How do we shape it? Well, they probably referenced historical images of the mermaid. This isn't actually the first edition of this logo. I think they're in their fourth or fifth permeation of the brand mark from the original days when they came up with it. But this is a good example of you needing to have a little bit of illustrated skillsets to pull off a mark like this. And so that's what this course is all about. How to approach a design idea that you might come up with, but it might intimidate you because you know it's going to require a little bit of drawing. Now, I make my living off of the fact that a lot of people don't have that skillset within agencies. A lot of times they don't have anybody on staff who can do that, and they hire me to do it on their behalf for their clients. And that's great, but I think every designer should have the skillset of utilizing drawing to pull off better designs. And that's what we're going to cover in this course. So this is a good example of illustrative design. Now there's bad examples out here, and I'm going to show you one. And this is a client that I had, and they approached me and they said, this is what our brand mark is. We'd like to improve on it. The creative director and marketing director called me and I said, yeah, I think I can improve on this. And this is just a donkey looking back at the viewer and the company actually makes industrial fans and you'd never guess it based off of this. So, what did I do? Well, I improve the aesthetic overall in creative a good illustrative design. If I don't mind saying that myself, and this is how we improved it. And it does fit their client base a lot better because they're very professional. They were the fastest growing corporation at the time I branded them, and they've gotten even bigger now. And this is on everything on all their products, really fun to work with and it turned out pretty good. Now, if you compare it with the brand marks I previously showed you, this is how it holds up within this lineup. So the first two Target and Nike graphic design, your basic graphic design, and those are great marks. Starbucks, an illustrative design, another great mark. And the last one from my client. Another nice mark with illustrative design being used. Now, of course, not every project requires illustrative design, but when a project can benefit from illustrative design, you want to be ready to pull it off well. And that's what I'm going to show you throughout the rest of the content in this course.