In a crowded digital world, brands are competing on stories, not just on products or price, & therefore, they have to tell stories that their audience can relate to. Brands can establish a relationship through values, intent, and emotions, and 2D vector illustration can be a very effective visual story, a relationship builder for brands on multi-format platforms.
Using Brand Messages for Visual Storytelling
It’s all about structure, setup, setting, and resolution. Vector illustrations make it very simple to create images that guide a viewer through a story. Using sharp lines, limited color palette, and consistent styles of the illustration makes it very simple to tell anything from trust and innovation to growth and sustainability in a simple and friendly way.
Unlike most stock photos, illustrated images have a lot more purpose and personality. They enable brands to show characters, worlds, and icons in a way that matches their voice.
Consistency for Easy Brand Recognition
Storytelling is all about consistency. Using the same type of illustration on a website, social media, presentations, and marketing campaigns enables the brand to be easily recognized. Using Vector illustrations, consistency is very simple to achieve as one can manage styles, proportions, and colors.
Ultimately, this consistency becomes iconic to the brand, and it further strengthens that sense of familiarity and continues to build trust each time the audience sees the story again.
Breaking Down Complex Stories
Many brands operate in the “hard to lift” industry (tech, infrastructure, real estate, logistics, and city planning), and it can be difficult to convey what their ideas are just through words. Pictures help to make things less serious and allow complex ideas to be explained in a simpler way through visual images.
For example, a 2D Vector map service can better show the service coverage, project site, or customer flow than a paragraph. To make it more clear and attractive, maps of icons, flow pictures are very helpful to convince the audience to understand this story in an easy way.
Emotional Connection Through Design
Stories are what connect us when they allow us to feel something. Illustration is a very powerful tool because it allows a brand to humanize itself, to give it life, personality, and emotion in any form of communication. Advertising images can create this feeling through characters, scenes, and symbols, but not photography.
Through the use of images and words, brands can control the mood, collaborative, businesslike, whimsical, and high-end, which must fit the target user and purpose. This empathy gives the target an attachment rather than information.
Flexibility Across Digital and Print Channels
Next-generation brand stories must be able to play on websites, apps, social media, advertising, presentations, and print media. Because of their scalability, vector illustrations are well-suited for multi-channel storytelling. The same illustration can be inserted into social media posts, landing page graphics, and explainer screens and animated.
This allows the story of the brand to be the same, but look very different depending on the channel it is being placed in.
Strengthening Industry, Specific Storytelling
In the real estate, construction, and design industry, images are used for storytelling. Layout, elevation, and conceptual drawings of the image invite the viewer to envision the space before it is built. All Architecture Illustration, created in vector, can then be a precise tool of this type of storytelling.
The image allows brands to visually communicate the vision, planning, and expertise that goes into them, building credibility with consumers, investors, and stakeholders.
Supporting Long-Term Brand Growth
It is essential to recognize that this type of storytelling is not a one-campaign story. Vector graphics are flexible, easily transformed, and give new life to the story, new services, new targets, and new messages, without having to begin from scratch.
This ability to be used repeatedly makes the image a long-term asset and not a design expense.
Conclusion
Brand storytelling can be effective if it is clear, emotional, and consistent. With the flexibility of 2D vector illustrations, brands have the ability to control the storytelling process (the visual aspects), feel the storytelling process (the emotional aspects), and develop the storytelling process (the strategic aspects). From simplifying complex ideas to developing memorable visual identities, vector illustrations enable brands to communicate effectively.
