Illustration System — Kylee Lisook

Case Study:
Illustration System

Client: Alliant Employee Benefits

Date: April 2021

Role: Creative Direction, Designer, & Illustrator

The company’s Employee Benefits (EB) division was using a wide variety of different stock illustrations all with differing styles. Illustrations often varied from presentation to presentation. Because of this, employees didn’t have a large enough library of illustration and icon resources to utilize for their presentations which often resulted in a mismatched, unbranded look from one deck to another.

Goals:

Create an illustration guide or formula for designers to follow so that new illustration needs can be fulfilled with ease.
Showcase further diversity of people by utilizing both photography and illustration.
Give EB a cohesive illustration & icon style as well as a library of pre-made designs to choose from.

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CHALLENGES:

After going through a brand update, Alliant hoped to unify the look and feel of all the company’s divisions. The EB division needed to fit within the updated brand, but also needed to cater to a different audience than the rest of the company.

RESEARCH:

Other illustration systems:

First, I researched other companies that utilize illustrations heavily as part of their brand. Three beautiful examples that stood out for me were Gusto, Brightscout, and Notion. These three companies each had distinct types of illustrations and icons that were used in specific instances throughout their websites. All three of the websites utilized a mix of larger spot illustrations, small (but still highly illustrated) icons, and smaller line icons. My goal for this project was to create a flexible design system modeled after these three categories. Lucky for me, we already had the small line icons for the third category!