Key Takeaway

This week we looked at all the different ways we could incorporate illustration into a User Interface. Illustration can offer a great way to tell complicated stories in a simple and easy to follow format. With human’s being able to process visual data much quicker than words in body copy, the use of illustration in an User Interface is a very powerful tool which I need to harness in my work. When choosing an illustration the main point to consider is does it fit the interface: is it thematically suitable, is it easy to understand and does it fulfil a necessary purpose. The best way to achieve this is to look at examples of work that is already out there and incorporate this in my music app project.

Points to Consider

• Use of illustration in apps and websites
• My Music App- Colours, Typography, illustration and icons

This Week’s Lecture

In previous week’s we have looked at all the different types and methods of creating illustrations, this week we focused in on how to incorporate these illustrations to create a user interface. Each different illustration type or style has its own use case and we looked at where and how to use illustrations to the best effect within user interfaces.

Illustration comes from the Latin - illustrare, to light up or illuminate and this is what we want to use illustration for in any user interface we design. To go further we want illustrations to:

• Clarify
• Make actions clear by giving or serving as an example
• Convey ideas simply
• Provide visual features and guidance

Imagery is processed by the brain around sixty-thousand times faster than words, and therefore can be a powerful tool in making a user interface easy to use and improving the overall user experience.

For an illustration to work in a User Interface it needs to meet three key criteria:

• Be meaningful
• Be recognisable
• Be straightforward

In my Music app, these are the key criteria each illustration I create need to fulfil, if they don’t meet these essentials then I need to either change the illustration or use another method such as text to provide the meaning I want to convey.

There are multiple areas where I can include illustrations in my app, the first as we looked at in week two is icons. For my app I have decided to create my own icon set, as my app has specific style and I wanted the icons to be in this style to fit with the overall theme and design of the app as a whole. You can see my outline, monochromatic icon set below: