Send Out the Signal
Posted by trev | Filed under Preliminary Drawings
During the development of the new design for my day job’s website, we decided pretty early that the site would center around two-tone illustrations. The idea was to make them fun and approachable, but still remaining sophisticated. Based on the early feedback, it seems that we hit the mark we were aiming for. Getting there however, was a long process.
While we decided on the “look” of the illustrations fairly early, it took a bit of work to get them where we wanted. Originally, I decicded that the illustrations would be all vector, but as we started pushing them out, I had a momentary sea change and decided to switch to brush and ink. The illustration above was one of the tests in this approach.
While I liked the homemade feel of this approach, we ultimately decided to go back to the vector approach. The vector illustrations were a bit cleaner and seemed a little more appropriate for the tone of the site. Ultimately, I think we made the right decision.
Judge for yourself. See the final vector version on the site here. As you will see, in addition to the different tools, I streamlined the background anf giving it flatter look. Props to James Hindle for his work on the original concept and doing the first pass on the layout for this illustration.