How to build a product that people will love? Just give them what they need. This is the basic principle behind Ouch, a library of interface illustrations created by Icons8 team.
It’s not a secret that most websites and interfaces need to have a face. When a user is engaging with a project, they want to understand what is going on and what to expect. The most trivial example, probably, is 404 page. No one likes to get one of those. And a “human” (sometimes an animal) face behind that error is something that softens the hit and frustration.
Funny illustrations are a way to class up your design; give it a voice. Though it’s not the most essential part of developing a new website or an app, so it is obvious that not every company is ready to pay artists to draw custom illustrations or to spend hours searching for quality illustrations for every situation keeping in mind that they should be cool, fit the design and have the same style.
Ouch vector library resolves these issues. It helps creators who don’t draw overcome the lack of quality graphics.
Illustrations From Top Dribbble Artists
Icons8 have chosen top Dribbble artists, reached out to them and paid for their trendy illustrations, so you don’t have to, and at the same time hired people to the team to develop custom styles. As a result, Icons8 gathered and created images for 25+ situations you might need to class up or soften. Fatal Error, Uploading, No Comments, Signed Up, Logged Out, and other subjects are available in the library.
There are 20 illustration collections at the moment. They have different color palettes, characters, and styles. Some are very detailed, and some are quite abstract. Because of a huge difference between collections, creators can find a fittable style for their designs in one place. Each style has 10-30 illustrations; all of them work together.
20 illustration styles
Here you can see examples of several collections.
Pale style illustrations. Detailed and neat illustrations. They are simple and understandable.
Abstract style illustrations. The name says everything for itself. The elegance of geometry and abstract lines in one picture.
Karlsson. Funny characters to add cool mood to your design.
Eastwood. Detailed illustrations in editorial style.
Taxi. Graphic illustrations in classic taxi colors.
Illustrations in Websites and Interfaces
Ouch illustrations are quite popular among Dribbble designers. A cute landing page with Pablo illustrations by Asha Rajput.
Website notification with Rush illustration by DudeBox
Users can choose a style they like, and download all modern pictures that fit their design in PNG for free (Icons8 requires to add a link to their website in this case).
Vector illustrations
In many cases, PNG format is enough, though if a user needs vector illustrations, they can buy a license. There are two options: monthly or yearly subscription. It includes not only Ouch illustrations but also
- 91,000+ icons in all formats
- 40,000+ photos in PNG and PSD
- Music for videos in MP3 and WAV
- Graphic design software for Windows with built-in design resources
- Photo Creator, online tool to customize images.
More to that, Icons8 paid license gives permission to edit the files and combine them to tell a custom story.
Ouch library is updated regularly. Icons8 designers add new illustrations to existing styles and also working on creating totally new ones. At the moment, users can choose from 400+ illustrations.
Users can navigate through the library by style, subject or just with a search field. Also, there is a way to download all illustrations with one click.
Ouch illustrations growth
Ouch illustration library was released at the end of 2018 as a side project and got a warm welcome from the design community. And if at the beginning Icons8 team was concentrated on creating only illustrations for the most popular screens, recently they added totally new subjects from a different field. Now you can find Animal Care, Nature, Sport, Medicine, Science, Technologies, Finance illustrations, and many more.
The team noticed that creators use Ouch illustrations not only on their website or app screens as was assumed but for blog posts, newsletters, and even ads. Though designed for a specific situation, each illustration can be used as an independent picture with several meanings based on the context.
Ouch illustrations speed up the design process and save money, even if they use a paid subscription, it still costs significantly less than ordering illustrations they need, to a talented artist. Illustrations are available for personal and commercial use.
As a result, users get trendy design on par with top design teams.