Use touchable, warm, mature illustrations to connect with users on an emotional level. In a world full of sterile, cold, financial companies, there’s plenty to be said about some empathy and human emotion. This is what we explored and found to be a wonderful fit for IGC’s new approach to an old industry. Our goal was to celebrate humans’ individual, unique, realistic financial goals and paths. Beyond typical imagery of piggy banks and charts, we wanted to emit empathy for anyone trying to educate themselves on finance.

We built the illustration style off the branding that In Good Company (IGC) had established over the years. As they’ve evolved and found their footing, it’s become more and more apparent what their illustration would look like. Here are some snippets from the deck.

We developed these three core pillars as bumpers on the brand as we explored the visual style. Aligning each of the brand pillars with a few visual motifs, themes, feelings, etc allows us to stay consistent and tell the story that most uniquely describes the client’s. Limiting the visual input and inspiration in the grand scheme of things allows us to move forward quickly. Eventually of course we put these away entirely as we start developing multiple illustrations successfully.

With the potential of multiple people working on the brand at once, creating a system was important to help illustrators (or even myself) keep everything looking and feeling consistent. By focusing on the hierarchy of people, then space, then plant life, we had guidelines that answered a lot of questions when beginning a new visual.