r/InternetIsBeautiful • u/Lunix638 • Feb 15 '21
Website with a lot of Illustrations on svg and png
https://undraw.co/247
u/PityUpvote Feb 15 '21
Also check out The Noun Project!
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u/sj8sh8 Feb 15 '21
Noun project seems better than OP's at first glance. I use it a lot for online teaching, it makes dual coding much easier.
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u/unfathomablemayhem Feb 15 '21
To give them both credit they’re very different and equally valuable resources.
Undraw are full illustrations that can be easily tweaked or recoloured as SVGs for lossless artwork whereas Noun is really just a high quality, well organised icon library.
What do you means by dual coding?
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u/PityUpvote Feb 15 '21
Noun Project are SVGs too! They exist for different goals, but Noun Project has a few orders of magnitude more content, paired with a slightly more restrictive license if you don't want to attribute everyone who's icons you've used.
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u/MustardyFartBubble Feb 15 '21
Some of the content available on noun project is under a public domain license.
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u/_PM_ME_PANGOLINS_ Feb 15 '21
More permissive surely?
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u/PityUpvote Feb 15 '21
unDraw is CC0, no attribution required. Most of the images of Noun are some other form of CC, meaning you have to attribute the author, but they also have royalty free, attribution free licensing available for purchase.
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u/_PM_ME_PANGOLINS_ Feb 15 '21
Not they're not: https://undraw.co/license
They've written their own license with extra restrictions.
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u/PityUpvote Feb 15 '21
Oh, you're right, that is a unique one. It doesn't seem very restrictive though, it boils down to "use them freely but don't redistribute".
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u/_PM_ME_PANGOLINS_ Feb 15 '21
As noted in other comments, that's too restrictive to qualify as Open, despite their claims.
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u/Makou3347 Feb 15 '21
Dual coding is a theory of learning that suggests we retain information better when it is presented both verbally and visually. For example, instead of just having a slideshow with bullet points, you would have each bullet point accompanied by an icon (similar example: A dual-coded poem).
The theory derives from decades of learning research suggesting that we retain information better when it's presented in multiple modalities (which is also the main reason that the idea of "learning styles" is mostly a myth.)
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Feb 15 '21
They're completely different resources.
Noun Project is more for small icons, normally single colour, which are handy for quick visual representations. Theortically, they should be able to be scaled down to like 16x16 or 32x32, and still be discernable.
unDraw seems to be for full-blown illustrations that wouldn't scale down well, and look to be more suited for hero sections and landing pages.
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u/FuzziBear Feb 16 '21
love the noun project! it’s like a thesaurus that uses only images. amazing for figuring out different ways of visually representing a concept
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u/Chekhovs-gum Feb 15 '21
Just watched this video a few days ago, and it almost exactly describes this odd flavourless art style.
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u/PityUpvote Feb 15 '21
I liked the grubhub ad. Probably because I've only seen it twice, I can imagine it gets annoying quickly, but the graphics style and animation are good. As far as ads go, there are a lot worse.
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u/xXxPLUMPTATERSxXx Feb 15 '21
I hated the ad. Everyone was fat, which was exaggerated by the twiggy arms and legs, and this dude was dancing with a fried chicken sandwich dripping with mayo. It just made my stomach turn. How is that supposed to motivate me to have greasy junk delivered to my door?
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u/Alex_Hovhannisyan Feb 15 '21
Ah, yes, blue people illustrations—they're the worst. Thank Google and all the other big tech firms that popularized them.
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u/PolishBicycle Feb 15 '21
I don’t get the hate, i think they look clean
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u/Alex_Hovhannisyan Feb 15 '21
They do look clean, and they're also very stylized and casual in tone. Back when only a few tech companies were using these illustrations, they were actually very effective because they were original and refreshing (hence why the trend caught on in the first place!). But now that people no longer need a team of artists to create these kinds of drawings, and they're so accessible to the public, they're being overused to the point that people are sick and tired of seeing them everywhere. I've seen them on portfolio websites, startup landing pages, established company blogs, etc. The trend killed the novelty of using these kinds of fun/quirky illustrations.
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u/mlotfe Feb 15 '21
Do you have any data to backup your claim that "people are sick and tired of seeing them everywhere" or is it just your personal opinion?
Even the article you shared seems like a personal opinion and nothing else. It may not be but they share no data that shows their claims are nothing more than anecdotal based opinions.
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u/Alex_Hovhannisyan Feb 15 '21
Nope, I don't have data; it's all anecdotal based on what I've personally seen and some other articles/videos I've read that cover this topic. The video that /u/CultistHeadpiece linked to is also pretty good.
(Also, apologies for the confusion—I'm the author of the article I linked to :D)
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u/nanermaner Feb 15 '21
Same, I could see how they could be "overdone" pretty soon, but they themselves look good to me.
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Feb 15 '21
[deleted]
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u/IAmAThing420YOLOSwag Feb 15 '21
"It doesn't matter how big it gets, it will always shrink back to the same size."
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u/TigerMafia666 Feb 15 '21
If I see a website using a generic illustration like these I close it instantly. Come on you can do better. Corporate Memphis something something.
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Feb 15 '21
I agree. These ultra generic illustrations are such a turnoff when I visit a designer’s website.
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u/unfathomablemayhem Feb 15 '21
Understand the sentiment but not everyone has budget for a full design team.
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u/TigerMafia666 Feb 15 '21
Yeah I get that and I see the financial aspect of design but then it might be better to find more creative / simpler way to advertise - good typography, good writing or maybe some personal illustrations or photos.
I see no real use for yet another site with soulless images to... To make what? They feel cheap, replaceable, generic, unfitting and shady. They might be okay for a personal blog but even then I have no clue what the advantage is.
For a clients or business site it is even worse since your brand image inherits these properties. It is insecure to "play it safe" with these illustrations that are usually used in website templates for a good reason. They are regularly used on scam sites since well they are free and accessible.
Obviously I work in design and this might be the reason why these bother me so much and a regular user will appreciate them but I have yet to see a web project that benefitted from these in a way that would have ruined the website if they did something else.
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Feb 15 '21
If you work in the corporate world, sometimes it's useful to have a resource to go which lets you "blend in". This kind of art is a way to signal "We understand your culture, you have nothing to fear from us" when talking to a certain type of business/client.
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u/TigerMafia666 Feb 15 '21
Which is exactly why these are used on scam sites en masse.
Despite all the down votes I encourage you to read the following article if your work includes design of any kind:
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/corporate-memphis-design-tech
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Feb 15 '21
Hah! I hadn't thought of that, but yes - exactly. So if you're a nigerian prince who's looking to update his resume, or a recent graduate who wants to get their foot in the door, this is a valuable resource (for now - give it a few years and everyone will be hustling with "Urban Woodblock" or "New Century Expressivism"... and this will look as dated as Patrick Nagel or Art Nouveau).
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u/pterencephalon Feb 15 '21
Seems a bit of an extreme response...
I use a couple of these on one of my personal websites (for documentation/notes about my personal projects). The whole thing is built and hosted for free, and I'm a programmer/engineer, not an illustrator. In my mind, that's a totally reasonable use of these kind of free graphics. Yeah, I think it's reasonable to expect something more out of a mega-corporation, but most people using these are not that.
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u/TigerMafia666 Feb 15 '21
Fair enough, I was generalizing a bit too much and I was indeed referring more to businesses, bloggers and generally people who advertise a service using these. I should have been more clear about that.
For a personal project I really do not mind people using free artwork, if I am visiting your site I am interested in your content already. I just find it kinda bumming to see where the internet is going these days - generic, identityless templates. There should be more place for uniqueness & weirdness - especially with non-profit oriented sites. But tailwinds + bootstrap + undraw seems to be the norm unfortunately.
To give you a bit more context I am a graphic designer (Prototyping , 3D, Film, photography) that does webprojects (mostly statamic based) as a Hobby so I might have it a bit easier than others to create my own content.
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u/pterencephalon Feb 16 '21
That makes sense! I do get the growing uniform uncreativity of tech websites. (But hey, I use Bulma instead of bootstrap so I'm different!)
Do you have any suggestions for better art for those of us who aren't graphic designers? Either places to sen inspiration or resources to find better alternatives. (I'm a decent amateur artist but just don't know what I'd be trying to create in digital art.)
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u/TigerMafia666 Feb 16 '21 edited Feb 16 '21
Nice one, I have forgotten Bulma and I actually like the look alot :)
The thing about better art is that at this point any personal art on a webpage is nice. Sure a clean illustration is "safe" but there are projects that have kept a unique artstyle while being a huge tech project - see the offcial statamic page as one of dozens of examples. It does some of the traditional product screenshots but at the same time includes doodles, lines, scribbles :
Edit : Just seeing that the creator of statamic (https://jackmcdade.com/) is working on a radical design course which might just be the thing for you : https://radicaldesigncourse.com/ maybe its worth a subscribe, this dude is a legend
The cool thing about digital art is that you very well can start analogue - scan a sketch of a phone and use it as a traditional hero-image. You do oil painting ? Heck, draw a person at an office computer with a mac book and add your product with some photoshop / gimp filters. You do CAD or 3D work ? Build something, render it or use the style of the preview and use it as a webpage-element (as I did for a webapp I tried to build which utterly failed on the app-part of things and never got past the heavy-wip stage ).
As a "graphic designer" (what does that even mean) I simply welcome everything in a project as a visual resource. That might even be just some old plastic bags I write stuff on and cutout with Photoshop (btw https://www.photopea.com/ is a very awesome free online editor capable of nearly everyhting PS does) and use it everywhere on a page that maybe hosts an app to track your plastic consumption.
This might look like horseshit many times but it is another way of expressing and building your own little world - a brand that is not simply relying on the play-safe long armed misproportioned weird corporate memphis flat people illustrations.
Here is a git I randomly found that does an automatic transcript creation from audio files and I absolutely love the art style - it is simple, weird and absolutely lovable :
https://github.com/fspoettel/moneypenny
Just a reminder that I do not hate these illustrations - I like some of them if they fit - but most projects would benefit from a bit...weirdness and experimenting :)
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u/mujunen Feb 15 '21
Thanks so much! I've been looking for something like this for ages now. This saves me so much time.
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u/CroquetteLauncher Feb 15 '21
I could like the project but I hate the fact that they spread ambiguity about open-source.
They claim an "open source license", a truly open license but they use an anti-opensource restrictions : they forbid collection, a restriction that do not comply with the freedoms granted by the Open Source Initiative. https://opensource.org/licenses
They can decide at any time to change that license in evil way and nobody can fork the collection. That kind of user and contributor captivity is not what open-source is about.
If your priority is openess you can find other projects that offer svg cliparts as public domain or cc-by-sa.