Able Lending has been one of my favorite clients I've partnered with. We began working together shortly after my jump to working full-time for myself and we've been able to really expand and grow the Able brand, specifically in the area of their illustrative stories. Since we started working together in November of 2016, we've completely revitalized the Able Lending illustration style, revamping every illustration that currently lives on their website today.

Within this case study I'd like to share with you how we went about revitalizing and revamping Able's illustration style. In the past I've worked with clients to redo their illustrations (mostly just recreating them). With Able we went a little bit beyond that. We looked at their current illustrations, which ones were working and which ones needed to be thought through more clearer. Below you'll see a little bit of that process and methodology.

One thing I'd like to stress here is that Able already had an established illustration style that they had been using for a while. When I first partnered with Able, our first goal was to revitalize the overall style and that involved a lot of auditing of their current site and style. Beyond just the visuals, I worked with Stu Smith(My original contact at Able) to understand the Able Brand and the story that they are trying to convey to their audience.

Once we had a good solid understanding of the story and vision we wanted to convey, it was time to figure out how we would first implement the new style for testing. When it came to the new style we discussed how we wanted to it look and feel. We knew we wanted to keep the simplicity of the original style but more updated and friendly.

Just like so many of my other partners, the creation phase starts with sketches and moves pretty quickly on the vectorizing. I always start each project with sketches that I share with my great partners at Able and from there I move straight into Adobe Illustrator to create the illustrations.

I've been pretty lucky to work with Able Lending for close to a year now and in that time we've created a large number of illustrations, including revamping their entire style and redoing all of their previous illustrations. This revamp has created a treasure chest full of amazing illustrations and I've even seen my own limitations receed as we've created more and more work together.

"Rocky’s work has been defining for the Able brand. He was able to create a voice inspired by prior work yet elevated that voice to a new level. His process has always been professional, with quick iteration from sketches to the final piece. We couldn’t imagine a better expression and interpretation of the values we’re trying to express."

— Stephen Carver, Able Lending

Even though I started working with Able Lending back in 2016, it wasn't until the Spring of 2017 that a good chunk of the work we did together went live. If you'd like to see more than the screenshots below you can head on over towww.ablelending.com and check out more of the work we created together.