How illustration can give your marketing messages a lift

Illustration is the original visual communication.

Our ancestors etched and painted drawings on cave walls and boulders and canyons thousands of years before Joseph Nicéphore Niépce captured the first recorded photographic image in 19th-century France. For many years, print advertising leaned on illustrators to sell everything from cigarettes to sofas.

Of course, camera technology has come a long way since Niépce’s crude camera obscura. Today, the best photography captures real moments in time to elicit strong emotion that moves people to act. The best photography is powerful because it makes people feel something and compels them to take action.

Still, many brands continue to incorporate illustration—sometimes in conjunction with photography. For example, digital icons—everything from “like” buttons to shopping carts and email links—are illustrations. Consider these icons alongside richly detailed, beautiful illustrations, and you’ll get a good sense of the vast range and flexibility of illustration.

A hybrid form called photo illustration combines the advantages of imagery and illustration. Intentionally unrealistic, photo illustration uses creative composition, optical illusion or digital manipulation to blur the lines between imagery and illustration. It tends to work well as a visual metaphor.