Sometimes, people often used the words ‘graphic design’ and ‘graphic illustration’ interchangeably. However, both words mean different things. One or the other or both are what businesses need to establish their brand identity. This might go without saying, but your business’ brand identity is very important. How do you separate yourself from the competition if you don’t stand out somehow? The answer is, you won’t be able to. Even though graphic design and graphic illustration are part of the arts, the two need to be clearly defined.

What Is Graphic Design?

Graphic design is the professional art of solving problems and communicating ideas through the use of visual compositions such as images, typography, color, and appearance/form. The main focus of the graphic design is to communicate to a target audience, and graphic designers in this field are directed by branding and marketing strategies, instead of stories and text.

What Is Graphic Illustration?

Graphic illustration is a combination of graphic design features and illustration. Graphic illustration focuses on fine art while graphic design is concerned with communication. When communication and fine art are blended, it creates graphic illustration.

The graphic illustration incorporates the design principles of shapes, forms, layouts, and color, to organize and demonstrate unique artwork.

The main difference between graphic design and graphic illustration is that while the former is all about communication to a particular audience in mind, the latter is fixed on creative interpretation. Graphic design starts with a visual identity to communicate a brand’s story, personality, and emotion through typography, logos, color palettes, styles guidelines, and images to make sure there is consistency in all other designs.

On the other hand, graphic illustration assists in expressing ideas visually, selling products, clarifying concepts, promoting and educating. Typical examples are fabrics, books, posters, flyers, ads, posters, packaging, and websites.

Who Is A Graphic Designer And Who Is A Graphic Artist?

A graphic designer is someone that uses mind-mapping to draw and create ideas via mind-mapping and mock sketching. A graphic artist utilizes design principles to create pictorial compositions and human anatomy. Both the graphic designer and graphic artist use much of exact visual mathematics language and geometry to give structure to their work. A graphic artist is focused on real-life events, people based on such realities, and objects to draw on the viewer’s emotions and feelings. On the other hand, a graphic designer is concerned with the placement or composition on the layout of a page that has to do with images, objects, or design assets—involving a bit of emotion but for invoking actionable response, or to sell a brand to an audience.

How The Internet Kills Professional Artistic Output Crucial For Business And Market Productivity

Creativity is the hallmark of graphic design and character-driven illustration. It is what gives famous brands like Coca-Cola and Amazon their unique identity and brand personality. Unfortunately, the advent of the internet, especially with the arrival of social media such as Pinterest, TikTok, Snapchat, and the proliferation of design apps/platforms like Canva has made it possible for people from all walks of life to create “art”. People who otherwise have no prior artistic or design skills and experience to create art can now pose as artists. For example, anyone on Instagram can easily claim to be a seasoned professional photographer because of the free design tools available to them. But in reality, they are not. These programs have destroyed the foundation upon which real and creative art was built. The Internet has eroded the quality genuine professional graphic artists and graphic designers bring, and have also made it extremely hard to retain their value. There is a need for businesses to rethink how they approach their art.

Why Businesses Must Rethink Their Sources Of Graphic Design And Illustration

Modern businesses are increasingly competitive, and no matter the niche or industry you belong to, there is always someone trying to outshine you. The only way out in such a noisy market is to stand out and remain visible and practically imprinted in the mindset of your target audience whenever they plan their next purchase. This is important because your marketing drive entails how you communicate your business to your target audience and customers.

If you fail to tell the right story, it means you have failed in your visual marketing, which is crucial because people process and easily recall visuals far better than words. Think about that.

Using visual marketing can help grow your business at a faster pace. You need solid visual content such as infographics to go viral on social media, a natural digital market for modern business conduct. To achieve this, businesses need custom graphic illustrations in their business marketing strategy.

On website and emails — People naturally react to visuals, meaning the better your website looks and appeal to people, the more clicks and visits it will get.

An outbound email with the perfect touch of illustration converts responses far quicker than words put together.

Perfect custom illustrations and designs on products, packaging, and presentations usually leave a firm imprint on people’s minds, thereby having a higher percentage to convert.

A professionally done graphic illustration helps to explain your brand story—the whos, the whats, the whens, the wheres, the whys, and the hows—of your business while making sure that people are visually stimulated with the right aesthetics. These benefits are only possible when offered by professional graphic designers and professional illustrators. This includes indie graphic designers and freelancers who are highly skilled and seasoned in what they do. The quality they bring surpasses the clipart and cookie-cutter “solutions” available on apps and social media. Powerful illustrations cut across a wide spectrum of design, which brings originality and artistic harmony to brands. This is character-driven illustration at its finest! They help set the emotional appeal needed to convince your target audience and customers to patronize your story even as your brand grows in their awareness and recognition.