Illustrations in UI/UX Design: Why and When to Use
Digital illustrations and UX. An unordinary mix, and yet UX illustrations can bring additional value to a mobile app and its user experience.
UI designers often employ digital illustrations to provide a better user experience.
Illustrations help convey complex ideas, transfer information, set a positive mood, and engage users. Let’s see how a UI development agency can use UX UI illustration.
What are UX illustrations?
The illustration is a way to convey a certain mood or message with an image. Illustrators use popular styles and original image presentations to show the author’s message.
UX illustrations are essential in web design and are used in many areas, from advertising to cartoon production to website design. Their main task is to make the project’s design more expressive and original.
Artists deliver the intended ideas with the help of illustration in modern UI/UX design. And the original style helps combine the recognizable parts of branding a business.
Five reasons to add UX illustrations to user interfaces
Aside from being pretty and eye-catching, illustrations are beneficial in communication. As the saying goes — “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This means a lot in the world of web content and scannable web pages.
Illustrations are an excellent storytelling tool
If you need to tell your users a story to achieve your business’s marketing goals, you can’t find a better way than UX illustrations. You can choose from popular styles of illustration UI; for example, comic books or cartoons are great for storytelling. You can create a character that tells your desired story in several parts or episodes of your marketing campaign.
Source: Fireart
Motion graphics and animated illustrations are even better for incorporating stories in your design, though they may require more resources.
Illustrations convey emotion
Bright and colorful illustrations can evoke the emotions you want in your users. A UI illustration is a powerful tool. You can create feelings of happiness, joy, interest, gloom, or suspense — whatever mood can help you connect users to your brand.
Source: strangehelix.bio Dribble
Characters, colors, and fonts help illustrators convey the message to consumers.
Illustrations help increase brand awareness.
Bright images catch attention. Advertisers know it well; that’s why there is always a Key Visual in the advertising campaigns. And it will always be done in brand colors or accompanied by a logo. Do the same in your UX.
Use recognizable branding elements of your company in the UX illustrations. Think Duolihgo’s Owl or KFC’s Colonel Sanders.
Using branded characters, colors, and retouching in all images will help increase brand recognition and create a strong association of the illustrations with your company.
Illustrations make a design unique and original
Unique and metaphorical illustrations set a brand apart from its competitors, capturing user attention and potentially leading to increased engagement and revenue.
For example, Asana’s blog has embraced an unusual Memphis-inspired illustration style for their blog. Seemingly bland, it gets instantly remembered and creates a no-nonsense, professional feel to its content.
Original design will differentiate your business from the competition, attract more customers’ attention, and increase your income.
Illustrations make it easier to understand information
With most users being visual learners, illustrations can demystify complex information, making it more digestible and accessible.
There is a reason why the urban navigation systems and the instructions for Swedish furniture are done in pictures. Not only are they easier to understand, but they also don’t depend on the language a person speaks.
When you want people to understand you right away, illustrations are irreplaceable.
Four ways UI illustrations improve UX
Ah, the benefits of using illustrations! Just one look at a UI illustration and the user has already begun to process your site’s content. As the journey unfurls, illustrations used smartly enhance UX in four main categories:
- Efficiency
- Engagement
- Experience
- Aesthetics
Illustrations make the user’s experience on the website more interactive, ensuring that the layout is functional and beautiful. With the right images from designers, users will feel comfortable and happy when looking through the pages and never get lost.
There are a few more features of the illustrations regarding web design. Let’s take a closer look at how to use illustration in UX.
Efficiency
Illustrations for UI design deliver your message faster and more emotionally than words.
Your explanations will work much better if you accompany them with digital illustrations UX since the visuals are perceived faster than text. They break down complex information into simple scenes that are easy to understand.
- Show the difference between pricing packages
Source: Irmak Bulut Dribble
- Deliver error messages in a fun way
Source: Yuliia Yatsko Dribble
- Guide users through the onboarding process
Source: Orçun Umut Kumova Dribble
Using illustrations in tutorials and onboarding screens of mobile apps is a classical move in UX for startups that helps you make the interaction process more accessible, smoother, and faster.
Source: Fireart for Parents app
Engagement
Do you remember how you always preferred books with pictures as a kid? Plain text seemed super boring stuff for adults.
This exact concept works with the illustration in UX. Yes, users can get through the app design, which is text-only. But will the user enjoy it? Hardly. When you see text-only applications, it’s usually academic, legal, or compliance applications — a.k.a. the boring stuff.
Illustrations make the user experience an exciting journey full of incredible interactions. Start this journey with an impressive introductory visual on a welcoming screen to set the tone for user’s interactions with a mobile app.
Design by Marta Więckowska for Fireart Studio
Make a character of a symbolic customer persona of the app on the opening screen to help users immediately relate to your product and increase conversions.
Below, you can see a welcoming screen of the app with a simple yet lovely illustration. From the first interactions with an app, these images evoke feelings, set a positive mood, and start building customer trust and loyalty.
Design by CRI$$ for Fireart Studio
We also like how MailChimp uses illustrations along the customer journey. They have a lovely sketchy style with an offbeat twist and present all ideas in an easy-to-understand form.
Experience
Adding a bit of motion to illustrations for UI/UX design can make the user experience even more attractive and interactive. Animation empowers you to craft dynamic experiences and creatively present a brand identity.
Look at this UI design illustration we have created for a traveling app. It features illustrations that have been later animated and turned into a beautiful cover video for a web app design.
Creative micro-interactions with engaging mini-illustrations can make your application more “alive,” unique, enjoyable, and helpful.
Another excellent idea is to gamify some UI elements. It will make an app dynamic-looking and add inner drive to users.
Aesthetics
Digital UX illustrations improve the user experience by default, even if they don’t perform specific functions. Mainly, they help make digital products look more appealing, add a feeling of uniqueness and originality, and create a positive user mood.
Design by Marta Więckowska for Fireart Studio
Using appealing UI/UX illustrations throughout a mobile app or a website, you can help your brand stay ahead of competitors. Combine it with the excellent microcopy, and you will generate a memorable experience for everyone who uses your app.
Beautiful, funny, and lovely illustrations on a website or a mobile app take a user’s right to the essence of a brand.
Ways to use illustration in User Interfaces
An illustration is not only aesthetic in its use on websites but should also be primarily functional. UI illustrations can be used in marketing materials, gamification, stickers, infographics, and themed images.
Are you still wondering: “When should I use illustration in ux?”Here are a few examples of how what you can enhance on your website or in the app with UX illustrations:
- Illustrated badges and trophies for user achievements
- Engaging characters and elements
- Custom stickers for chat applications
- Virtual reward stickers in educational or productivity apps
- Infographics to simplify complex data
- Step-by-step process explanations with visual aids
- Seasonal and cultural themes
- Celebratory illustrations for events and holidays
- Navigational icons
- Illustrated call-to-action buttons
- Themed backgrounds for websites
- Illustrations on app loading screens
Conclusion
Digital UI UX illustration perfectly adds beauty, emotion, and clarity to your mobile app. It improves user experience by setting a more positive mood, establishing a more personal connection between a brand and users, and smoothing the user’s negative experience.
It adds even more value to a mobile app or a website user experience by getting the point across faster than text, engaging the user through their journey, creating dynamic brand experiences, and boosting the aesthetic appeal of the user interface.
Pick the illustrator carefully to ensure you get the top-quality UI/UX illustrations design. Your best bet is to either get a talented art director/illustrator in-house to deliver consistent images over the years or get engaged with a professional web design and illustration agency.
We at Fireat are always happy to create lively and conversion-driving UI/UX design illustration. Don’t hesitate to contact our managers — they’ll gladly help!
