20 Consistent Style

 

When we create an illustration, it is vital that it is consistent. The best way to do this is by creating guidelines across our illustrations, using Templates for the creation of the illustrations and by using our collection of base elements. So it maintains a scale of order and uniformity across all illustrations.

Reuse as much as possible, even from other illustrators. illustraStock offers basic elements from the repository ready for different purposes. It will help to maintain the consistency without reinventing the wheel. If the purpose of one illustration is to draw a house, draw the house and from the repository download all the Components (Windows, doors, etc) of the house from past illustrations or other illustrators’.

By offering a collection of homogeneous illustrations the end user can to reuse them without needing to adapt it.

Style Guides

A style guide is a set of standards for the design of illustrations. A design style guide usually addresses illustration size, colors, brushes, stroke, default fill …

Having a consistent style will obviously create an overarching style that will create harmony across you illustrations. It will mean that various illustrators can tackle illustrations on the same platform safe in the knowledge that their work will look part of the family.

Highlighting key areas such as a color palette or the stroke weight are obviously vital to creating solidarity across a style. But outlining information such as the values attributed for the illustration style, or what you want to achieve from having them on your platform are also just as important

But being consistent doesn’t mean that you can’t change. In fact, consistency gives you a firm foundation for evolving into offering even more options for even more people. Once you have create an illustration through the consistent delivery of your Style Guidelines, customers have permission to expand.

Templates

The same characteristics of the Templates that increase efficiency also create standardization. They also apply and enforce standards. All drawings must be created from company templates, to ensure that each user creates a drawing that reflects the company, not the taste of an illustrator. If multiple people work on a project, this will be the most likely way that each file is equally configured. Each user will use the same layers, same colors, same brushes, views, artboards, default fill and stroke, everything, or at least almost everything. Users are more likely to use what already exists than to create their own versions of layers, brushes, colors, and so on successively. And although some adjustments change from time to time, it will be much easier to control it.

Base elements

For the creation of the landscapes, the outdoor and also the indoor scenographies, there is a base collection of elements that helps the creation of the illustrations while keeping more consistency within the collection. Windows, doors, basic plants and animals, common street objects… and more are ready to use.

Illustrators can help by adding any object that may be forgotten and be useful in a neutral situation that could be repeated in most of the illustrations.

If a collection of illustrations is going to be created for a different community (Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Hindustan, Central Asia…) at first the base collection of elements must be downloaded and adapted to the new community. Such work will increase the efficiency in the long run.

Reusing illustrations is one of the strengths of modern Design techniques. It simplifies your illustration and speeds up the drawing process by not having to constantly create new illustrations, also make your design more consistent.

Rememeber: As a collaborator you have free acces to those files

Backgrounds

The backgrounds are created to increase the efficiency with the creation of illustrations. Not just for the customers, also for the collaborators. With a background an object, animal or person in a situation can be represented in a context by just making a collage.

Example: once the mammals are finished, different backgrounds of different ecosystems can be used to show the animals on their appropriate environment.

Rememeber: As a collaborator you have free acces to those files

Re-use

It is not necessary to reinvent the wheel again and again, illustraStock allows collaborators to reuse and remix illustrations by:

  • using one own illustration as the base for a new one,
  • copying and pasting an old illustration,
  • copying and pasting another illustrator’s illustration.

Reusing it both reduces the time used and mistakes with the creation of illustrations while keeping consistency within the collection. Example: to create a wardrobe from an old one by just deleting or creating new lines, but without touching the basic lines (peripheral lines) of the wardrobe. Not just save time, also avoid mistakes.

 

License

Designer's guide Copyright © by illustraStock. All Rights Reserved.

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