How to Create Original Flat Illustrations: Tips from Graphic Designer

How to Create Original Flat Illustrations: Tips from Graphic Designer

Whatever path digital artists choose in their professional development, establishing one’s unique creative style is one of the most difficult tasks. Blue Sky Graphics online graphic design course graphic designers with expertise in both traditional and digital art, joins us today to explore this topic. We are eager to offer some helpful ideas and techniques that will assist designers in discovering and maintaining their own style in business and theme flat illustrations for a variety of applications. Consider what graphic artists might do to avoid sinking in a sea of styles and catching their own golden fish while achieving professional objectives.

What exactly is flat design?

Let us start with some definitions. Today, the phrase “flat design” refers to visuals for a variety of purposes and activities that share aesthetic characteristics. Flat design is a wide and varied expression of digital art that is known for its minimalistic and simple use of visual expressive methods. Due to the harmonic simplicity employed as the foundation of this design approach, the phrase is now frequently used as the antonym of «rich design». The most noticeable characteristic, which inspired the name of this approach, is the use of flat 2-dimensional visual features as opposed to extremely realistic and detailed skeuomorphic graphics. Flat design has been evolving over the past several years, including more and more areas of graphic design while still finding the widest and most varied use in the realm of digital design for online and mobile interfaces. This design approach has been identified as a style that is beneficial for improving usability and aesthetic harmony of user interfaces.

Flat Illustrations
Flat Illustrations

Where did it come from?

Obviously, flat design did not emerge out of nowhere. Its origins are typically found in Swiss style, which design historians consider to be its immediate predecessor. Swiss style, also known as International Typographic Style or simply International Style, is a design direction that emerged and received criticism in the 1920s before finding its bright expression in graphic design in Switzerland in the 1940s and 1950s, becoming the solid foundation of graphic design in the mid-twentieth century around the world.

Explanation of Flat Design

Although this style took many forms in the realm of visual design for print, such as posters, stamps, postcards, book covers, magazines, and so on, it greatly expanded its boundaries with the advent of digital design, particularly in the area of design for user interfaces. Websites and mobile apps that are through the dynamic growth of creative search have opened up an incredible and productive viewpoint for this minimalist and functional approach to design solutions. The style was dubbed “flat design” (or “flat graphic design”), and it quickly became popular, ushering in a new path in graphic design, defying skeuomorphism and “rich design,” and it was aided by new difficulties presented by the area of interface design. Flat design illustration as a versatile and creative technique has successfully won its own position in the diversity of design approaches accessible and developing these days. In our last post, we discussed flat design, its history, and its advantages.

Collaboration with other designers on your team via the use of Libraries will also assist you in being consistent and efficient. Giving the Art Director or the most senior designer authority for Library and style guide changes would reduce misunderstanding and ensure consistency in branding. Simply ensure that there is a channel of communication when changes are made so that everyone is on the same page.

How can you make flat drawings unique and add your own personality to them?

Today, many designers experiment with flat graphics. To avoid being lost in the vast and ever-expanding diversity of artworks, it is essential to develop your own presentation and style. It becomes more difficult in flat, which has less expressive methods and volumes than other styles. However, difficult does not imply impossible.

1. Move away from basic form geometrization.

Take out your sketchbook and a pencil and do some fast hand drawings. When compared to producing a digital image, the sketch will take the least amount of time. Furthermore, it will assist in rapidly locating strong lines as well as intriguing motions or postures for a character. After you have created a drawing, take your time to examine it before attempting to experiment with it. Try hypertrophied, rounded, or sharpened forms – it may provide valuable features defining the nature of the movement or revealing the character’s emotional condition.

2. Examine the work of other illustrators.

Do not pass up the opportunity to learn about the ideas and methods they use. Consider what aspects or colour schemes make their artworks appealing to you.

3. Select an eye-catching viewpoint and composition.

The selection of an intriguing viewpoint and composition is one of the elements that contribute to a good illustration. If you wish to convey serenity, make sure the composition is balanced — or deliberately slanted if you want to demonstrate dynamism or tension. If the composition is multidimensional, the planning should be clearly visible: put an emphasis on the plan where the main characters or components are located. Scaling the components or colour and tone accents may also be used to create rhythm to the composition.

4. Examine the sight from various perspectives.

After you have settled on a composition, consider how the scene might seem from other perspectives: from the perspective of the third convergence point, via fish-eye lenses, from the perspective of a 3-year-old, or from the perspective of a very tall basketball player. This technique will assist you in determining which of the angles will be most helpful to the illustration’s aim and message.

5. Use unique metaphors

Try to think of analogies that will assist you communicate the concept behind the image. Do not simply choose the first picture that comes to mind: there is a good chance it will be overused and will not be unique enough to stand out.

6. Consider your colour choices carefully.

The well chosen colour palette will assist to reinforce the concept and message, create the right atmosphere, and highlight what is important. Maintain the tone contrast of the whole composition: examine the image in black-and-white mode to verify the accuracy of the selected tones — it should remain contrast and well-read.