How We Collaborate with Illustrators to Get the Perfect Look for Your Brand

Brand Design

Credit: Illustration by Chelsea Bunn from Good Scary Studios

Collaborating with illustrators often helps us get the perfect look for our clients’ brands (although we do a lot of illustrations in-house as well!) Here’s what that process looks like.

Credit: Illustration by Abbey Holden

Pre-booking:

  1. Discussion with the client (typically on a free 30-min consult call) on their needs/expectations for their brand. Here’s where we first discuss the style/content of their illustration.
  2. We reach out to several illustrators in our preferred network with the desired style, and give them a small brief for the project (including inspiration, scope, style, and budget).
  3. Once we’ve chosen our preferred illustrator, we send relevant samples of their work to the potential client alongside the client’s full proposal.
  4. The client approves the illustrator, pays their deposit, and we then pay send them a subcontractor agreement (and pay their deposit).
Credit: Illustration by Morgan Morris from Thuro Design

During the brand design process:

  1. We explore more deeply into illustration content and style with the client through our comprehensive questionnaire and Creative Direction call.
  2. The client reviews and approves illustration style inspiration / the content of the illustration in their Creative Direction presentation.
  3. While we design the typographic / border elements of their brand, the approved Creative Direction is sent to the illustrator alongside any information about where it will be placed in the lockup (to determine horizontal or vertical orientation).
  4. We typically require two internal rounds of refinement with the illustrator directly and the client gets two external rounds of refinement (managed by us).
  5. Once the illustration is in one of the final client rounds, we present the fully built out brand concept in our Brand Concept presentation.
  6. We finish refinement, the client approves their brand, and we export their brand and create their style guide.
Credit: Illustration by the Hello June team

We LOVE partnering with illustrators, and it’s one of the reasons why we consider Hello June a full service brand identity studio. Whatever your needs, we can make them happen!