The rise of flat design is proving that less really is more in many web design scenarios. You don’t need a breathtaking design to make an impact with your website. A similar minimalist yet stylish design trend that the industry has been seeing more if is illustrative design. If you’re looking to make a website in the near future, you may want to look into this design style as it adds a lot of personality and character to a website. As the name suggests, the design is based on what looks like hand drawn illustrations. Here are 25 of the top examples of illustrative web designs to inspire your own look.
This is a quirky illustrative design that uses doodles in the background to add relevant to the topic matter.
2. Co-Motion
Illustrative design can also be used in a professional theme. Co-motion is a branding firm that uses an illustrative designed box to show their innovative and out of the box approach.
3. Lensabl
Lensabl is sells lenses to consumers. What’s interesting is that they use an illustrative approach to teach consumers how their service works.
4. Retrace Health
This is another example of how to use illustrative design to provide instructions to the users. The visual elements make the standard instructions really stand out.
5. Ida Hoffart
Illustrative design doesn’t necessarily have to be quirky and casual. Here you see a high quality illustration being used on an artist’s site. If you want to go with this route, you’ll probably have to pay more as you’ll need a digital artist as opposed to a graphic designer.
This university site uses illustrative design with simple logos to provide a great user experience.
7. Kinetic
This is an incredibly well designed and engaging illustrative site. It uses moving images and parallax scrolling to great effect.
8. Caava Design
Caava Design uses a different style of illustration for their front page. It also uses a lot of colors that are layered over the illustration for a unique feel.
This is an example you should pay attention to. It uses illustrative design in a long page format to tell a unique story. Illustrative designs are great for storytelling as it’s really captures the attention and imagination of the user.
10. Handsome Frank
This website belongs to a creative agency that is highlighting some of their illustrative designs. You’ll see a lot of retro designs with a contemporary feel.
11. Trinipedia
Many web application sites are going with the illustrative design trend to bring life to their products and add personality to a technical topic.
12. Rollpark
This is another well-designed site that uses illustrations. What makes this site unique is that it uses illustrations to paint a picture of the various features. This concept can easily be used for physical products.
13. Kick My Habits
Illustrative design can also be great for web content and apps. This is a simple tool that lets you see how much your bad habits are costing you. It’s a very interactive app that’s engaging largely due to the unique design.
14. OT-24
This illustrative website is a presentation that sells a business service. The illustrations are animated and a storytelling format is used to describe the features of the service. Another eye-popping example of an illustrative design done right.
15. Gallantry
Your illustrative design doesn’t need to make up your entire site’s design. Gallantry uses illustrative design as an accent and the biggest use is found on the footer.
16. Wrk
Looking to integrate illustrative design into your navigation? Wrk does a great job of using illustrative panels as navigation links on their main page. It works because it creates contrast between the various navigation options.
17. Branded 7
Instead of using illustrative design as the highlight of the website, Branded 7 uses it on the background of the website to add personality without overwhelming the focal point of the site.
18. Made By Few
You can combine illustrative design with a hero image. Made By Few pulls this off well and makes you want to delve deeper into their website to learn what they’re about.
19. Paravel
Here’s another great example of an illustrative hero image. The white space and background really draws attention to the hero image and makes you want to click for more information.
20. MCOFGI
Rather than using illustrative images, this website uses illustrative fonts to draw attention to the content.
21. Heroic Labs
Illustrative accents help add character to this website without taking away from the main content and selling points.
This is a cute and homey website that offers dog walking services. The design is simple and goes straight to the point about what it offers. This is the perfect example of a minimalist site.
23. Clever Polly’s
This restaurant site uses illustrative elements strewn across the content. It makes it seem like a message is being delivered across the backdrop of a painting. This could have easily gone wrong but they managed to find a good balance for the illustrations blended into the content.
24. Waaffle
It seems people can’t seem to get enough of parallax design. This is yet another example of an illustrative design that is used with parallax scrolling.
While it’s not a completely illustrative site, it uses illustrative designs and elements to deliver a retro feel to the site. Sometimes, adding illustrative elements can take your site from average to unique.
Hopefully, these examples have inspired you to make a website using illustrative design. This design approach will help you stand out from your competitors and really grab the attention of your visitors. The best part is that most of these designs are fairly simple and can be done by many graphic artists/designers if your plan is on hiring one.
