Ouch: How to Get Free Vector Illustrations for Your Design

Ouch: How to Get Free Vector Illustrations for Your Design

Positive user experience is said to be based on utility and effective functionality of the product. But is that all needed for success? With the growing number of apps and websites, it’s not enough now. Users expect not only functions but also delight and aesthetics, emotions and catchy details. That’s when Free Vector Illustrations come into play. In this article, we’re going tell you about the benefits of illustrations for mobile and web design and show you the easy way to get free graphics in multiple styles via Ouch.

Free Vector Illustrations

What Is Ouch?

Ouch! is a library of free vector illustrations that help creators to class up their products and content.  It’s another project from the Icons8 team adding its two cents to the global aim: provide designers, bloggers, content and marketing specialists with high-quality visuals.

So, the goal behind Ouch is to provide creators who don’t have drawing skills with illustrations that have an elegant and trendy look. Together with stock photos, icons, and music, the library of free vectors allows for changing the way people create things.

Let’s consider why and when illustrations are a good idea for your project.

The Problem of Boring Content

One of the big issues in the process of creating digital products is bland content that doesn’t catch the visitor’s eye. The competition is really high now on both web and mobile. In 2018, there were reported about 8 million apps in the Google Play store, 2.2 million in the Apple App Store, 669K in the Windows Store, and 600K in the Amazon Appstore. Turning to the web, we see that numbers are also impressive, with about 1.7 million websites online.

Considering that it’s easy to understand what a tough struggle for the users’ attention the creators have to face daily. Especially given to the fact that not only the number of digital resources grows but also diversity. Even if you’ve created mind-blowing or super-useful stuff, its boring and unemotional looks may nullify all your efforts and investments: chances are users won’t even notice your app, website, article or email among the tons of others.

Where can creators experience the issue of boring content? The following cases are quite typical:

  • Common app screens feel dull and get users annoyed while waiting or getting error messages
  • a blog article looks too long and complicated without images
  • a landing page doesn’t catch attention without graphics
  • a website homepage has quite common looks and risks getting lost among competitors
  • another “nothing special” and “who cares” email will not attract many leads, etc.

Free Vector Illustrations

Illustration from Pablo pack on Ouch

Solution: Attractive Illustrations

The way to deal with the issue is engaging visuals, and among all the types, the illustrations present one of the top design trends for the recent year or two. More and more creators strive to class up their products this way as attractive graphics solve several problems at one stroke:

  • Images are perceived faster than text, so users quickly get the key message
  • Illustrations support a visual hierarchy of a page or screen and this way enhance interactions and scannability
  • Graphics strengthen the aesthetic and emotional appeal of the interface
  • Illustrations let creators use the psychology of colour, shapes and visual metaphors
  • Stylish graphics are eye-catchy and draw users’ attention to the needed details, processes and messages.

Free Vector Illustrations

Example of onboarding screens with illustrations from Ouch

Applied to websites and mobile applications, vector illustrations become another functional element and only then a decoration. It means that they also support usability and navigation.
What’s more, illustrations are the way to activate the so-called aesthetic-usability effect: the appearance of the interface, article or email directly influences users’ feelings about their utility and efficiency. Users tend to feel that products that look better, also work better.

Free Vector Illustrations

App screens designed with illustrations from Pluto pack

Free Vector Illustrations

“No connection” screens with illustrations from the Fogg pack

What’s the Problem with Illustrations?

When you make the decision to apply illustrations in your project, the new challenge arises: where to get them and how to make them work together. Point to consider are the following:

  • you need a professional artist skilled in digital art (or you need to have this kind of skills yourself)
  • In the case of interface illustrations, the graphics applied in one product have to be consistent in style and correspond to general requirements and guidelines
  • creating illustrations from scratch can be time-consuming and quite costly.

As a team of creators, we know all that pain. The points are especially hard to overcome if you are in a low budget or limited time frame. In addition, it is another job to find an illustrator, to explain what you need and estimate the time and money required for this task. That was the reason why we created Ouch and shared it for free.

How Can Ouch Help?

To support creators that face the lack of catchy graphics, we’ve paid to digital artists (so Ouch users don’t have to) and organized the illustrations they’ve designed in one simple resource. The result, for now, is the library of free vector illustrations in 17 styles for a variety of themes, typical screens, and states in user interfaces, such as:

  • Page not found
  • Sing up/sign in
  • Fatal error
  • Success
  • The list is empty, etc.

Another point to mention is the variety of styles and metaphors. You can find illustrations that are funny and serious, detailed or minimalist, traditional or experimental, cartoonish or abstract. All of them are organized in packs so you can take the illustrations of the same style for different screens in one app or use the graphics in the same style for the various articles in one blog. Let’s have a look at some of them.

Pablo pack of vectors is now popular for landing pages and blog articles

Abstract pack is also often seen in blogs as well as emails

Cute images from Mirage pack are a good choice for popups and notifications

 

Super funny characters from Flamenco pack can make any message fun and lively (by the way, we also use them in UX design for Icons8 web app).

Illustrations from the Fogg pack work effectively for landing pages

A cute and funny character from Karlsson pack effectively works as a friendly mascot helping users interact with a product.

Event the vectors from the same pack can look and work differently in different interfaces. Check the example below: all the illustrations are taken from the same pack but in combination with different fonts they also work differently.

Free Vector Illustrations

Onboarding screens for different apps using illustrations from Rush style

Can Anyone Use Ouch Illustrations?

Yes! All the illustrations can be downloaded free for a link.

Or users can pay for even more. With the license, you will be able:

  • not to use credits to us
  • get vector source files and edit them as you like
  • also get full access to our icons, photos, and music.

So, don’t wait long, try Ouch, find the style that works for your idea, and make your content brighter.

3 Comments on “Ouch: How to Get Free Vector Illustrations for Your Design

  1. Hi Sanjeev, amazing post. Vectors and icons are the evergreen need of not only web designers but also marketers even bloggers are continously looking for ways to download them for free. Ouch is really awesome.

  2. Found your post interesting to read. I cant wait to see your post soon. Good Luck for the upcoming update. This article is really very interesting and effective.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.