Illustrations For Website Of Digital Security: Case Study

Have you ever thought about why so many online businesses use illustrations on their websites? One of five websites has them in the menu section and on the homepage. Regardless of how big and serious the business is. This article reveals a secret of website illustrations’ popularity with a Shakuro case study. Stay tuned if you want to get the concept of its success in a real security service business.

The power of  website Illustrations

Users are 323% better at following directions with illustrations than they are at following directions without illustrations. That’s why app illustrations and website graphics have been earning a lot of love from businesses for a very long time. Even from before apps appeared. From those times when it was necessary to convey the meaning of any action, phenomenon, or service as simply and clearly as possible. And illustrations played this role better than photos or texts, so that a person immediately understood the meaning of a thing and wanted to use it.
But circumstances have become tougher. Now, people won’t trust a website if they don’t like its design and form an opinion about it in 0.05 seconds. If your website isn’t easy on the eye, you won’t be trusted by your customers. So, the perfect web design and a comprehensive pack of illustrations to clearly explain everything are a must for most businesses. Moreover, a website must have a regularly updated and fresh design. In our other blog article, we tell more about the latest web design trends.
Commercial illustration for a website or an app has at least three superpowers:

#1 Websites with illustration create ambiance and mood

What could be simpler than an illustration? Its task seems completely clear: to convey information in a shorter, faster, and clearer way than words. A good illustration gets into the user’s mind super-fast and easily conveys mood.

#2 Website illustrations help communicate your marketing message

The second superpower of cool illustrations for business is that you can make almost any information digestible for the user, even the most complex ideas. The best combo is a custom illustration together with a short, simple text. That’s why your (even with difficult concepts) marketing message will reach its goal faster.

#3 They activate branding to its full capacity

Illustrations can reflect the branding style and mood of the company very effectively. They echo the brand and help to convey a company’s concept much better than photos. You can buy fully editable commercial illustrations and adjust them with colors and details to the company’s goals.
Choose the most suitable graphic mode for your website. We name five of the most popular commercial illustrations styles in our other blog article.
Illustrations create a unique visual style that distinguishes you from hundreds of other companies. Especially if they are made from scratch.
Let’s dive into practice.

Kobil website illustrations case study

What happens when a business finds a perfect illustration company? Magic! The project we describe in this article is relevant, successful, and still really popular on Behance. It dates to 2019, but people still come and say how cool it is.

Company story: Kobil Digital Security Service

Kobil is a German digital security company that protects every channel where money is involved. With a bunch of highly detailed illustrations, we covered what they call Solution Story. Our goal was to recreate that story in a visual way and deliver a clear message.
This website illustrations project did not even have a work statement or any well-formulated brief. All the requirements were built up through an hour-long Skype call with the client. And then in less than one month, we produced around 50 commercial illustrations – a huge number, considering that we usually make ten times less. All the approved illustrations went into work immediately.

To be honest, almost all illustrations were approved by the client on the day they were made. That’s what we call “when a business finds a perfect team.”

The complex idea for a commercial art illustration

Some illustration concepts were quite complex – protection of banking data, securitization of letters, blockchain, and servers. The challenge was to show a story behind each image. Moreover, we had only one month for the whole project.
That’s why we changed our way of communicating with the client for this project. In the absence of a well-formulated brief, we communicated with a client, not through managers or creative producers, but directly through a designer.
Of course, this played a great role in the successful completion of the task within the very tight deadline of just over a month. We had to draw at a breakneck speed.
Our client had plenty of illustrations on his website and wanted them to be completely redone.

How did previous illustrations for website look like

Here is a mobile phone – and the manipulations that take place with it. We totally redesigned it in an isometric view.

Goals of website illustrations

The first main goal of this website illustration case is to make difficult concepts simple. Some Kobil services are multilayered and crazily complex, but important for Kobil’s potential clients. Our illustrations clearly explain the main idea of each concept. The second key point is to open up the brand power and show the professional approach that Kobil has.
Sometimes illustrations’ goal is to deliver the right emotion and create a mood. In this medical school illustration case study, you can see how strong story behind each graphic character provides emotional value.
After a brief with a client, we’ve chosen references, made a sample illustration, and started working. We borrowed the color palette from the existing site — colors that had already been chosen and approved.

References for website illustrations

We had 5-7 web design inspiration references. We wanted something 3D, connected to technology, and truly digital.

Test of the first illustration

We tested the first illustration. It was a digital signature in PDF. After just a few edits, the client accepted everything right away. After the submission of the first shot, we signed a contract and moved forward.

Sketches for custom illustrations

We created many illustrations without any sketches. We assembled them in 3Ds max right from the paper, client approved them, and then we made revision in Adobe Photoshop.

Our designers made sketches on paper – very fast, literally skeletons of concepts. The designer always kept in mind that a person is able to instantly see and recognize a limited number of objects (say, seven or ten). These objects should be clearly different, so as not to turn into a mess that requires a significant amount of time for analysis. That was the main difficulty in creating all website illustrations – not to use too many objects.
If pictograms and signs have several interpretations or are simply incomprehensible, then their meaning must be duplicated with text. This is necessary for technical illustrations, and the main thing is to decide which elements should be in the illustration itself, and which should not be. The text itself was uninformative, and illustration alone would not have been enough to understand. Together they represented a strong concept.

Styles and creative expression of website illustrations

We borrowed the color palette from the existing site — colors that had already been chosen and approved. We used two styles: the first one was on a dark background, with glossy, glowing plastic elements.

The second option was luminous, soft, and airy. It was for a complex technology, server, partners, and the connections between them. We needed to show all the technologies appearing right on the mobile phone of a potential user.

This highly-detailed and realistic kind of business illustration is popular. The topic itself is very popular, and the technical illustrations are very clear, pixel-verified. Everything connected to blockchain, finance, data protection needs illustrative support. There are not many such graphics around the web, as they are complex and strongly customized – that’s why they are a bit expensive. But illustrations play a great role in the marketing of any company, even if it is a small business illustration.

Final result of website illustrations for Kobil

With a new set of illustrations, we boosted up the brand power. Look how confident and trustworthy the website looks after changes:

Kobil is securing 100 million+ banking transactions with clients from all over the world. For such an expensive and demanded service, as the company provides, it is a key thing — to have perfect and professional website design. The Kobil website has over 6000 monthly visitors. After implementing new illustrations, the bounce rate decreased by 19%. Such changes strongly influence company profit.

These illustrations show the serious and professional approach that Kobil has as a digital security service. We tell a whole story behind each image and made difficult concepts simple.

How illustrations for the website can help to make a bigger impact and stand out 

Illustrations tell stories. With their help, you can tell not only the story of any function, service, section of the site. You also can tell a story about the brand uniquely.
We can see the huge dominance of photographic content, both photo, and video nowadays. It originates from hundreds of social networks and ends up on Google. Therefore, app illustration or landing page graphics in a sense are salvation. They create a unique style while greatly differing from the content that already overloads the human brain.
If you are ready to create something that truly distinguishes you from others on your website or app, contact us to discuss your future illustration project.