TLDR
Illustrations are replacing photography because sometimes a photo just cannot show what a business does. They can make abstract ideas easier to understand, keep a brand consistent across a website and load quickly. Stock photos can also make businesses look too similar, with the same handshakes, smiling teams, and office shots. This is especially true for businesses in finance, software and other services where there is not much to photograph. But photography still has its place. Real people, products and proof are often better shown with real photos.
Somewhere along the way, drawings started doing a better job than photos. Here’s what changed.
Illustrations are winning because they can do things photos can’t. They can show ideas you can’t photograph, keep a brand looking consistent across every page, and load quickly.
Stock photos, on the other hand, can start to look the same – smiling teams, handshakes, people pointing at laptops. If you sell something abstract, like software, finance, or a service, a custom illustration can explain it more clearly and feel more like your brand.
But simply replacing stock photos with stock illustrations doesn’t solve the problem. The real value comes from having a visual style that is your own. Below, we will look at where illustration works best, where photography still wins, and what each option costs.
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Why are businesses choosing illustrations over stock photos?
Stock photos can feel familiar for the wrong reason. You’ve seen that same handshake-over-a-desk photo on countless company websites. Once you notice it, you can’t unsee it and your clients notice too.
Three practical reasons the shift is happening:
Photos can’t always show an idea
Try taking a photo of secure payments or business growth. You will probably end up with a padlock on a laptop or a graph going up. It might look fine, but it doesn’t really explain anything. An illustration can show what is actually happening, like money moving, systems connecting, and payments travelling across the world, all in one image.
We did this for Delpa, a crypto payments company. At the top of their About page, we used an animated illustration instead of a photo. And a bit of motion design to bring the scene to life. It shows a dotted globe with real transactions appearing in different countries, different currencies, and lines connecting them as payments move around the world. In about five seconds, you understand what the company does. A photo wouldn’t explain it as well.
One style, everywhere
Photography can feel inconsistent. Different shoots, different lighting, different photographers, and suddenly your site looks like three different websites put together. A set of illustrations keeps the same look across every page. It makes the whole site feel like one company.
They load fast
A large hero photo can easily be 300KB to 1MB, even after compressing it. A simple SVG illustration can be under 20KB. If someone is on a weak phone connection, a smaller file means the page loads faster.
When should you use illustrations instead of photography?
When you want to add a photo, ask yourself what the photo would actually show. If the only photo you can think of is a stock laptop or a posed handshake, that’s probably a sign to use an illustration.
Services with nothing to shoot
Finance, software, insurance, consulting. The photo is usually a laptop, a meeting room, or people sitting around a table. And your competitors are using the same stock photos. An illustration can show what you actually do.
Anything that involves a process
A photo can only show one moment. If you need to show three steps, how things connect, or a before and after, an illustration can show the whole thing in one place.
A product still in development.
There is nothing real to photograph yet. You might have a mockup or early design, but an illustration can help show what you’re building.
Take Pythia Sports. They use data to predict the outcomes of sports events, and you cannot take a photo of a prediction. So their website opens with a globe made from thin lines and small points, like a network of data around the world. One image shows what they do. They read patterns across the world to make their predictions. A stock photo of a stadium or a laptop with data on the screen would not explain it nearly as well.
Do illustrations work for serious industries like finance?
Yes. In fact, finance is often a good fit because there isn’t much to photograph. We designed the website for HealthAxon, an investment company focused on health and social care. The site needed to feel professional enough for investors, but also warm enough to reflect the people and services they invest in.
We could have gone down the usual finance web design route with serious photography, dark colours and lots of corporate imagery. But that would have missed the health and social care side of the business. We could also have used photos of doctors or care workers, but that might have made the company feel more like a healthcare business than an investment company.
Instead, we used custom illustrations to bring some warmth into the design while keeping the site clean and professional. It gave us a way to bring both sides of the business together. The website later won an award.
When photography is the better choice?
Illustrations aren’t always the right choice. Some things are better shown as they really are.
Your actual team
If people are going to work with your team, show them the real people. An illustrated avatar of Sarah from support doesn’t build the same trust as a real photo.
Your real product or space
If you sell a physical product, run a hotel, have a shop, factory or office, people want to see the real thing before they buy or visit.
Proof
Case studies, real events, client work and your actual workplace are better shown with real photos. They give people something real to look at.
The best websites use both. Illustrations for ideas and personality. Photography for people, products and proof.
Do illustrations hurt your SEO or page speed?
No, not if you do it properly. There are two main things to keep in mind.
Don’t put text inside the image. If your headline or important text is part of the illustration, Google can’t read it properly and neither can screen readers. Keep the text as normal website text, with the illustration sitting alongside it or in the background.
Give each illustration a useful alt description. For example, Illustration of a person moving money between two accounts is much better than image1.svg. It helps people using screen readers and also gives search engines some context about what the image shows.
One other thing to watch is animation. If an illustration is heavily animated, it can make the page slower. Keep it light and you still get the visual impact without slowing the page down.
What does custom website illustration actually cost?
There is a difference between custom illustrations and using something from a standard illustration library.
A few years ago, a particular style of illustration became very popular. Bright colours, simple shapes, big hands and feet, small heads. You have probably seen it. It was used by companies like Facebook, Google and Slack, and then appeared on thousands of other websites. It even got a name Corporate memphis. There is nothing wrong with the style itself. The problem is that it’s now so common that it can make your website look like everyone else’s.
We would advise going for custom illustrations if your budget allows. Free illustration packs are easy for anyone to use, so they won’t make your brand feel very unique. They are basically stock photos, just drawn.
What does custom illustration cost?
A single custom illustration can cost a few hundred pounds. If you need several illustrations that all follow the same style, for example for your homepage and a few key pages, the cost would usually be around £1,000 to £2,000.
If you want a complete illustration style for your brand, especially if you want animation as well, the cost will be higher. This is a bigger project and needs more time to develop properly.
But you probably don’t need to go that far. Three or four good illustrations can be enough to make a real difference. You could use them in the hero, to explain something that is difficult to show with a photo, or to bring an important part of the website to life. Our advice would be to start with a few and see how they work. You can always add more later if you need them. You don’t need 50 illustrations. You need a few good ones in the right places.
Can you use AI to make website illustrations?
Yes, AI can create and even animate illustrations now and it is useful for ideas, rough layouts and quick images. But if you are using an illustration as part of your brand, there is a bigger question. Who owns it?
You may not own it in the way you think. Copyright rules around AI images vary from country to country. In some places, images made entirely by AI may not have the same copyright protection as work created by a person. Check the tool’s terms too. Different AI tools have different rules about commercial use and what rights you get when you create an image.
Our advice is to use AI for ideas and rough work. For illustrations that become part of your brand, we would recommend having a designer create them. A graphic designer will also make sure the final illustrations are vector, so they stay sharp and crisp at any size and keep the file light.
Final thoughts on how a boutique financial website should attract institutional investors
A boutique financial website does not need to be flashy to win institutional investors. It needs to be clear, fast and specific. The goal is not to impress investors with the website. It is to help them understand the firm quickly.
Andrew began his career in web design and development in the late 1990s. His eagerness to embrace the medium saw Andrew setting up Reactive Graphics in 2004. With over 20 years plus working as a London web designer supporting a wide range of clients, Andrew’s experience in web design, web development and graphic design have helped him to build a growing business.
