I was going to use stock illustrations, but in general, I don’t like using stock on websites, preferring instead to use real photos and custom illustrations where possible. For my own website, I wanted a set of illustrations for the services section that would explain what I do, without leaning on stock imagery or long blocks of text. They needed to sit comfortably alongside real project photography and needed to feel cohesive across the site.

From the outset, these were never meant to be standalone illustrations.

They needed to behave like a system:

• consistent footprint and scale
• shared UI language
• repeatable components
• a clear action or outcome

Once that constraint was in place, every decision became easier and harder at the same time. Easier because there were rules, harder because anything that did not belong became very obvious.

One conscious decision was to show process rather than polish.

Sketches, wireframes, dashboards, calendars, content grids, charts, UI states. These are the parts of the job that clients rarely see, but they are the parts that actually matter.

Each illustration hints at how things evolve:

• layouts becoming pages
• content being created and managed
• performance being measured and improved
• identities moving from sketch to system
• interfaces refined through iteration

They are deliberately unfinished in places, because the work itself is never really finished.

The biggest improvements almost always came from taking something away.

Icons became simpler. Buttons were resized. Gutters were aligned. Visual noise was stripped back. If an element was only there to look nice, it usually went.

Because these illustrations are part of a system, changing one meant revisiting the others.

Adjusting spacing in one exposed inconsistencies elsewhere. Simplifying an icon in one meant simplifying it everywhere. It was a lot of back and forth, but that consistency is what makes the set work as a whole.

I think so. What started as a small design task turned into a really worthwhile and enjoyable exercise. The illustrations add something considered and crafted that stock illustrations cannot.