9 Benefits of Using Illustrations in User Interface

The human brain processes image 60,000 times faster than text. When it comes to marketing, customers find visual content more engaging and exciting. For example, tweets with images get 18% more clicks and 150% more retweets than those without.

Illustrations are visual stories of concepts, an action, text, or anything that the brand wants to convey. It supports an idea or text through emotions to easily interpret the actual meaning of the information.

According to a survey, the speed of processing an image for a human visual system is just 150ms while understanding the image taken even less than 100 ms. This guide will discuss the ways and benefits of using Illustrations in User Interface (UI) designs.

How to use illustration in UI?

Like other parts of our website design, illustration is a functional element that clarifies the message and allows users to interact with your website. Here are a few ways to incorporate illustrations in your website:

hero images
theme images
social network pages
mascots and characters
infographics
advertising banners
entertainment
blog article images
tutorials
rewards
notifications and system messages
stickers (trendy for messenger apps)
storytelling

Benefits of using illustrations in UI

Here are some exceptional benefits of using illustrations to improve the UI:

1. Message transfer

People perceive images faster than words and illustrations are more attractive than other forms of visual communication. In other terms, with illustrations, users can better understand the context behind the image, clarifying emotions that words cannot.

Users will avoid a website or app that opens just with a wall of text. Images also tend to do better in long-term memory, ensuring your visitors will remember more about your company than reading.

Image credits: Crafttor

2. Originality and artistic harmony

Graphics add creativity to an interface and allow brands to stand out from the competition. Using hero images for blogs, reviews, and landing pages will help designers fine-tune their artwork while balancing them with business goals or ideas behind the project.

Ecommerce brand Etsy uses brand colors throughout its illustrative content to tie in with its logo. They have illustrations on their gift cards as well.

Image credit: Etsy

3. Visual hierarchy

Fonts, white space, CTA's, forms, and other information are essential parts that designers have to consider. Custom illustrations can help design the navigation of the whole interface, serving as a visual divider between sections. They’ll provide a clear overview of what's going on in front of them.

This page from HelpScout about their feature of in-app messaging has a beautiful illustration of two people having a conversation while doing something naturalistic:

Image credits: HelpScout

4. Attention

Illustrations are for creating visual hierarchy and supporting visual division and draw attention to the most prominent parts of the website/app. Designers can attract users’ focus to certain information by adding the right illustration, portraying the particular emotion directly to the screen.

Image credit: Dropbox

5. Aesthetics

Irrespective of the great functionality of illustrations, they offer an aesthetic value to the design as well. There have been many arguments favoring ‘functionality first’ themes, yet humans still desire beauty. Having a functional website paired with desirable colors will make people notice your product.

An old marketing term—Packaging sells, is still applicable in the digital world. A functional and user-friendly website with illustrations representing your product will sell.

Slack uses illustrations throughout the interface and on blog images.

Image credit: Slack

6. Emotions

Humans are emotional creatures, and they drive our purchasing decisions as well. A humane touch to your digital presence also represents your product or service that you are offering.

Creating an emotion around your product will let people connect with your brand and conduct business with you. Illustrations have the power to depict powerful emotions that your brand represents.

Illustrations are so powerful that designers can take something as an unpleasant experience, like landing on a 404 page and make it delightful.

Image credit: Lego

7. Brand identity

Adding informative, original, or custom-made illustrations to your website will distinguish your brand from the competition while building a brand’s strong identity. They are quite common in themes and the onboarding process on apps and websites. Illustrations also make the interactions more user-friendly and human-like.

Trello has custom illustrations throughout their website, from the homepage to blog post cover images.

Image credit: Trello

8. Add humor

Communicating the right information about your brand requires a lot of effort and an efficient copy. A little humor is a savior and can even bring life to be dull yet unavoidable pages. Use interactive and funny illustrations to showcase an error screen, an unsuccessful payment, or anything little yet important otherwise.

When users encounter a problem, illustrations can add a little sense of humor to humanize the problem.

Image credits: Dribbble

9. Storytelling

Storytelling is about uniting multiple informative blocks into one story, making them more memorable while showcasing a strong connection between the parts. Use your hero characters to depict a story, send the message, set the atmosphere, or present the benefits such that they correspond to your brand’s mood and voice while staying relatable to the customer.

MailChimp uses illustrations throughout the whole interface.

Image credit: MailChimp

About Crafttor

Crafttor currently offers a vast library of icons and five families of vivid illustrations—Jeet, Akki, Cord, Kako, and Sandy. Our free plan provides free illustrations for startups, freelancers, and brands to download free illustrations in PNG & SVG with a limit of 2 SVG/day & 10 SVG/month. Whereas our Individual and Premium Member has no daily limits and comes with extra perks.