Different Tools For Illustration

There are a number of different methods of creating illustrations especially with the advancements in technology that we have in todays society, we are constantly pushing the boundaries of what we can do digitally and this is evident with the the meta verse and applications like Decentraland. Our world is becoming more and more digital by the day and most of us use technology in one way or another.

For design and illustration our possibilities are endless as we can use traditional mediums like pens, pencils and paper or card in addition to other mediums like paints and inks to create textures that could be used to create atmosphere within a design or illustration. Another option in to use digital formats like photography and photo-copying as well as digital applications like Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop and Affinity Designer which allow you to create a series of bezier curves to create a crisp vector image. Some artists love to combine different mediums, both traditional and digital, to create a unique style of design that has a lot of texture to it, I am going to go into further detail on different tools and how they could be used within design and illustration.

 

Handheld & Physical Tools

Pens, Pencils & Paper

Pens, pencils and paper is possibly the most widely used tools with design, art and illustration as it allows artists to lay the foundation for their artwork by creating an initial sketch. This is used in other industries likes architecture where the architect will often create an initial sketch on the building before creating the final render that has textures, shading and lighting to make it look more realistic and three-dimensional. Sketching is also used in other areas of design like UI and UX design where designers will often sketch out initial ideas for design layouts, either for web or for mobile screens.

Pens, pencils and paper are also great for creating textures for lines or backgrounds, personally I use a lot of texture when I work on personal projects because I love the texture it creates, using scans or images of different types of paper or even ripped paper can give a design that extra wow-factor.

I have included some examples of sketching below to illustrate this how pens, pencils and paper are used to create designs and textures.

 

 

 

 

 

Paints, Inks & Watercolours

Paints, inks and watercolours are another traditional medium or art, design and illustration, while they’re not commonly used in illustration they can be great for creating textures through creating digital scans of paint strokes, ink splashes and  watercolour stains. In the design software Affinity Designer they offer a variety of brushes that replicate brush stroke which allows digital illustrators to create a more organic and natural feel within their design – this is like blending traditional tools with more modern tools that we use today.

Similar to how paper can be used to create textures within a design, ink splashes and watercolour stains can also be used to create different background textures to help create some ambience and atmosphere throughout the design. Pairing these textures with typography, vectors and other digital production techniques like double exposure can create some really interesting results.

I have included some examples of how paints, inks and watercolours can be used within design and illustration to create a variety of textures.

 

 

 

 

Digital Tools & Applications

Photography & Photo-Copying

Photography is a digital tool that is often used in design, it can also be used in illustration as a reference image to base an illustration or scene off of. Another method of using photography is photo-montaging and collaging through the use of photo-copying, this allows designers to import real-life objects, textures and images into their work to create a more unique design style, Wolfgang Weingart is widely recognised for his use of photo-montaging and photo-copying different textures into his work.

Another way designers can use photography within their work is through the use of photo manipulation and concept art, this is a style of design that I have recently been looking into as I really like how these designers create a fantasy world by combing different images together. This is a skill that takes a lot of practice as you need to consider different lighting values within each image in addition to shadows and highlights, and how each image blends together to make one cohesive piece of art.

I have included some of examples of photo-montaging, collaging and photo manipulation to give you an idea on how photography can be used to create art.

 

 

 

 

Vector Graphics

One of the most common ways of creating digital illustrations is through the use of what designers call “curves” or “bezier curves”, these are a series of lines that form a shape or plane on the canvas and can make up an image – this is usually done with the Pen Tool in applications like Adobe Illustrator and Affinity Designer. Flat style illustrations are extremely popular in modern design, these are often just generic flat colours and shapes making up a landscape or object within a scene.

I have included some examples of vector graphics and how curves are used to create shapes and illustrations of objects.

 

 

 

Designers & Illustrators

Marion Deuchars (Hand)

Marion Deuchars is one of the designers we had previously looked at in our lecture last week due to her illustration style and how she creates her work. Marion Deuchars is a British illustrator, designer and author who is widely recognised for her illustrative work in children’s books as well as her use of a unique handwriting style typography, throughout her career she has established a name for herself by winning multiple awards in addition to working with some of the biggest brands today like Samsung.^[1] Marion Deuchars uses a lot of handheld tools to create her designs, like most illustrations I assume Marion will start of each of her designs with an initial sketch to form the foundations of the idea. In her final renders it looks like she uses a lot of texture brushes to replicate the marker or pencil effect, she could also scan these in through digital mediums such as photography or photo-copying.

I have included some examples of Marion Deuchars work below to demonstrate how she uses traditional tools to create her designs.

 

 

 

Dan Fern (Hand)

Dan Fern is a British designer who is widely know for his use of collaging and real world materials throughout his work, initially studying art and design and the Manchester College of Art and the Royal College of Art, similar to Marion Deuchars, Dan Fern has gained a huge reputation for his design style throughout his career. His work is featured in a number of museums across the world in cities like London, New York, Barcelona, Amsterdam and Kyoto.^[2] I find his use of colour extremely interesting throughout his work as he seems to be drawn towards using rustic, natural tones with blocks of bright primary colours like red and blue, I personally find this draws the viewers eye towards the block of colour creating a focal point within the design.

I have included some examples of Dan Fern’s work below to demonstrate how he uses real-life textures to create a collage-effect within his work.

 

 

 

Matin O’Neill (Hand)

Martin O’Neill is an Irish/British graphics designer and illustrator who is renowned for his use of mixed media throughout his work, he has worked on a vast amount of projects throughout his career and his portfolio has a variety of projects ranging from design and publishing to advertising, film and even interior design, he went on to co-found the design studio Cut It Out in 2003. Martin O’Neill is widely recognised for his use of multiple different mediums like typography, collaging, photography, paint, ink and other digital mediums of design that can be used, his distinct style of using mixed media throughout his work has inspired many other artists and designers around the world – including myself.^[3]

I have included some of Martin O’Neill’s work below to demonstrate how he uses photo-collaging to create his illustrations.

 

 

Olly Moss (Mouse)

Olly Moss is a British graphic designer and illustrator who is widely know for his atmospheric graphic style, Moss has worked on a variety of projects throughout his career like video games, book covers, poster designs and logo designs, during his time at the University of Birmingham he was creating t-shirt designs and selling them online for extra income while he was studying. His most famous projects include the Star Wars poster designs, the digital book cover designs for the J.K Rowling Harry Potter book series and the graphics for the video game Fire Watch.^[4]

I find Olly Moss’s story extremely inspirational and almost relatable as he initially started design as a hobby while he was studying literature at the University of Birmingham, he began displaying his work on the internet through various online social media applications and began to gain recognition for his work. This is relatable to me because this is exactly how I started with design, granted I was not in university when I started but hey, I began creating basic photoshop edits of images I had taken on my phone when I was in school and over the years I have continued to learn different aspects of design weather that be visual and audio. I love Olly Moss’s illustrative style and how he creates ambience through the use of perspective lighting where the foreground objects and darker than the background object.

I have included some of Olly Moss’s work below to demonstrate how he uses digital tools to create his illustrations.

 

 

 

Jorge Colombo (Mouse)

Jorge Colombo is a Portuguese graphic designer, illustrator and photographer who is famously known for his digital finger-painting styled illustrations, Colombo has worked on a variety of projects in his 30 year career but his most recognisable project is the digital illustrations he created for The New Yorker, where he illustrated 100 landscape images of New York City for magazine publication. Jorge Colombo takes a more modern approach to creating his designs as he often uses an Apple iPad and Apple Pencil as well as applications like Pro-Create.^[5]

I have included some of Jorge Colombo’s illustration work below.

 

 

 

Rogie King (Mouse)

Rogie King is another designer that we had previously looked at in our lecture last week, Mr. King is a multi-disciplined designer who focuses a lot of his work towards the web and digital products. His unique illustrative style of design almost has a “sticker” or “badge” feel to it, these clean curves allow for his illustrations to be exported as an SVG format and imported into his web design projects. While Rogie King works on a variety of different projects, he is a huge fan of the design application Figma which shows his interest in designing for the web and creating digital user-interfaces for digital applications and websites.^[6]

I have included some of Rogie Kings work below to given you an idea on his clean illustrative design style.

 

 

Breno Bitencourt (Mouse)

Breno Bitencourt is a multi-disciplined Brazilian designer who is primarily known for his brand identity and logo design for clients around the work, with over 10 years experience within the design industry Breno Bitencourt has created over one-thousand logos for various different clients. While he is primarily know for his work in brand identity his portfolio also extends into graphic design and digital illustration where he is widely recognised for his low-poly renders of portraits and objects, I have looked into this style of design while I was studying at Northern Regional College and explored low-poly image tracing of buildings around Belfast, Northern Ireland. Although he is well know for logo design and low-poly illustrations, his portfolio also includes other mediums of design like 3D art, animation, typography design and glitch art.^[7]

I have included some of Breno Bitencourt’s illustrations below to demonstrate how he creates his low-poly illustrations through the use of basic geometric triangles and polygons.

 

 

 

Sarah Parmenter (Mouse)

Sarah Parmenter seems to be a very talented lady as her career reaches far beyond the boundaries of design as she works on music as a professional singer, does acting work, attends talk shows and podcast, and teaches students around the world. While she is experienced in a variety of industries and design mediums her design work is primarily tailored towards user-interface design and user-experience design where she is widely recognised for he web and mobile design standards. She has worked with a number of clients throughout her career including News International, Blackberry and STV in addition to working alongside Jeffery Zeldman, who we cover in our previous modules last semester, at his design studio.^[8]

I have included some examples of Sarah Parmenter’s work below to demonstrate her focus on UI/UX design and UI component design.

 

 

 

Veerle Pieters (Mouse)

Veerle Pieters is a Belgian graphic designer, web designer and illustrator who is widely know for her work within front-end web development and user-interface design, she offers a series of tutorials on her website where she teaches CSS and how she would stylise a website in addition to sharing her explorations and research on her blog. Although she is renowned for her work in in web and app development she is also recognised for her illustrative work where she uses geometric shapes and curves to create modern illustrations – this is the style of illustration that we would commonly see in icon designs in applications.^[9]

I have included some of Veerle Pieters work below to give you an example of her illustration style.

 

 

 

Previous IXD Students

During our lecture we looked a some illustrators and designers that had previously studied Interaction Design at Ulster University, I found this extremely interesting as these are people who are beginning to build a reputation for themselves within the design industry and knowing that they were taught by the same lectures that are teaching me is also intriguing to me. I personally think that looking into these designers will give me an insight into what they are doing now after they had graduated from Ulster University.

 

Oliver Jeffers

Oliver Jeffers is an award-winning illustrator and author from Belfast, Northern Ireland, who has gained a huge reputation throughout his career in writing and illustrating story books. While his work is tailored towards storytelling and illustration he also works with other forms of art and design like painting, sculpting, bookmaking and collage. Jeffers work is recognised around the world with his book Here We Are being turned into a film and available on Apple TV, his work has also been feature in a number of museums around the world in the United States, Europe, United Kingdom and Ireland.^[10]

I have included some of Oliver Jeffers work below.

 

 

 

Peter Strain

Peter Strain is an award-winning graphics designer, illustrator and animator from Belfast, Northern Ireland. Drawing inspiration from modern social problems and political issues he directs his work towards humour and storytelling, his work is often recognised through the creative use of typography creating the shape of an object or part of an object, this distinctive typographic style is a part of his reputation within the design industry. After looking at the vast amount of working in his portfolio I took a look at his client list and his features include the likes of Adidas, Fox Sports, Island Records and Harry Potter – these are all huge names and brands!^[11]

I have included some of Peter Strains work below.

 

 

 

 

Atto Partners

Atto Partners is a design studio based in Belfast, Northern Ireland who are made up of a small team of students who went to Ulster University, with their primary focus on designing and developing digital products. They have worked with a variety of clients around the world from countries like the UK, Ireland, Europe and USA, in addition to working with brands like Canon, Comic Relief, Hub Games, Raylo and many others.^[12] Their website is extremely discrete and straight to the point without displaying any work or previous projects which made it difficult to see their work and style of design.

 

Jordan Henderson

Jordan Henderson is a freelance graphic designer, illustrator and concept artist from Belfast, Northern Ireland. When researching who Jordan Henderson was I noticed the vast amount of work in his portfolio with a variety of different design mediums and outputs like illustration, digital painting, animation and video production. Jordan Henderson usually works alongside design studios, agencies, brands, game developers, theatres and animators and has worked with brand across the world.^[13]

I have included some of Jordan Henderson’s work below.

 

 

 

 

Paddy Donnelly

Paddy Donnelly is an award-winning designer, illustrator and author from Belfast, Northern Ireland with over 14 years experience within the design industry. Paddy has gained recognition for his creation of children’s story books where he draws the storyline of the book to help guide the story and make it easier for the younger age group to understand.^[14] I personally love Paddy Donnelly’s work and think his creative use of typography combined with digital painting and illustration is extremely creative.

I have included some of Paddy Donnelly’s work below.

 

 

 

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Task – Continue With Master Apprentice Icon Recreation

After our lecture we were asked to continue with the Master Apprentice task that we were given last week in order to improve our skills and develop an eye for icon design and illustration. Once I’m finished with my recreations of the icons I want to explore a style of icon design that I will be looking to draw inspiration from for the illustrations in my travel application, this will allow me to see how they are created to give me a better understanding on how to approach designing my own icons for this project.

I have included some screenshots of my icon recreations below.

 

I completed this redesign task in Figma which is primarily used for user-interface design and user-experience design and I found that the tools I had to work with were extremely limited when it comes to designing icons, I think when it comes to designing my own icon set and illustrated icons for my travel application project I will use a more advanced vector graphic software like Adobe Illustrator or Affinity Designer as this will allow me to have access to specific tools that will help me create an icon set.

I personally found this project extremely interesting to see how these icons are created, when approaching this task I wanted to try a couple of different methods. The first being a subtractive approach by building the icon from basic geometric shapes and adding points on the curve to manipulate the shape to fit the design, the second approach was using the Pen Tool to outline the shape and create custom curve shapes to fit the design. Each had there benefits and limitations but I personally found it easier taking the subtractive approach to icon design and sculpting the icon from a basic square or circle.

 

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References & Sources

1. Marion Deuchars. 2022. INFO — Marion Deuchars. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.mariondeuchars.com/info. [Accessed 08 February 2022].
2. Royal College of Art. 2022. Dan Fern | Royal College of Art. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.rca.ac.uk/more/staff/dan-fern/. [Accessed 08 February 2022].
3. CUT IT OUT I MARTIN O’NEILL. 2022. ABOUT — CUT IT OUT I MARTIN O’NEILL. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.cutitout.co.uk/about. [Accessed 08 February 2022].
4. Wikipedia. 2022. Olly Moss – Wikipedia. [ONLINE] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olly_Moss. [Accessed 08 February 2022].
5. Jorge Colombo. 2022. About — Jorge Colombo. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.thejorgecolombo.com/about. [Accessed 08 February 2022].
6. Rogie King. 2022. Rogie King — Multidisciplinary Artist, Designer and Programmer. [ONLINE] Available at: https://rog.ie/#about. [Accessed 08 February 2022].
7. Dribbble. 2022. Dribbble – Discover the World’s Top Designers & Creative Professionals. [ONLINE] Available at: https://dribbble.com/Bitencourt/about. [Accessed 08 February 2022].
8. About. 2022. About. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.sazzy.co.uk/about/. [Accessed 08 February 2022].
9. Veerle Pieters. 2022. Veerle Pieters. [ONLINE] Available at: https://aneventapart.com/speakers/veerle-pieters. [Accessed 08 February 2022].
10. Oliver Jeffers. 2022. About — Oliver Jeffers. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.oliverjeffers.com/about. [Accessed 08 February 2022].
11. Peter Strain. 2022. Contact — Peter Strain. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.peterstrain.co.uk/contact. [Accessed 08 February 2022].
12. Atto Partners – strategic design and development. 2022. Atto Partners – strategic design and development. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.attopartners.com. [Accessed 08 February 2022].
13. Illustration, Poster Design and Concept Art, Belfast, Northern Ireland – Jordan Henderson Illustrator. 2022. Contact & About — Illustration, Poster Design and Concept Art, Belfast, Northern Ireland – Jordan Henderson Illustrator. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.jordanhendersonart.com/contact-about. [Accessed 08 February 2022].
14. About – Lefft ★ Paddy Donnelly. 2022. About – Lefft ★ Paddy Donnelly. [ONLINE] Available at: https://lefft.com/about/. [Accessed 08 February 2022].