ILLUSTRATION‎

Story-making through drawings

KEY TAKEAWAYS

01

Illustrate complex concepts
Illustrations can help us clarify and explain complex subject matter.

Smaller illustrations don’t require facial features, as the details will get lost.

02

Tell product stories
Illustration can help us build visual stories that explain the development or use of products.

Metaphors
Illustrations can also be a useful tool to explain less literal ideas.

Colors
Use canvas colors as your base and add accent colors purposefully.

03

Clarify functionality
Illustration can help us understand how a product or service is supposed to work.

Adapt illustrations to any format by adding, deleting, or rearranging elements.

04

Essential tools

Illustration guide

Illustration toolkit‎

Icons, illustration, and information design video tutorial‎

Illustration is a powerful story-making tool that helps us bring to life diverse narratives, intangible technologies, and new-to-world products, always in an approachable way that everyone can understand.

UNIQUELY MASTERCARD

Every brand has a color palette, but few have a custom-designed illustration style. At Mastercard, we have a distinct need to tell stories about our products and services that connect to a global audience. We think illustration helps us do that.

DID YOU KNOW?

Visual thinking is deeply ingrained in the human brain. Our very first written languages were logographic, or pictorial, and even now we continue to think in pictures, unconsciously creating vivid visual images to accompany our thoughts