Abstract Illustration for Incluvations

This piece of original art was created for the new website www.incluvations.com. Incluvations guides companies toward the best paths and solutions within the world of equity and belonging. I designed this image as Senior Art Director at Connecting Dots Guru (connectingdotsguru.com), a one-of-a-kind, boutique, branding agency based in NYC. Within a larger branding and website project, the job of this editorial graphic was to provide a visual balance to the text content on the website in the ‘About’ section. We envisioned a mosaic-themed graphic that expressed the idea of diversity as a strength, emphasizing that each step towards inclusion involves unique, customized solutions, much like solving a puzzle. We looked at stock art, asked a few designers to try some things out, but in the end, I was the closest to the project and once I paused on layout and coding, I could channel my fine arts Yas, immediately drafting a pencil drawing of a compelling matrix in my dotted Leuchtturm1917 sketchbook. I always forget how geometric drawing can be so intuitive when you lower the blast shield helmet and use the force. Once you have a strong pencil sketch, tracing in Illustrator is kind of automatic for an experienced vector artist. When all the lines are traced with the pen tool, I use the Divide tool in the Pathfinder palette, cutting up the shapes with mathematical precision. Finally, I clean things up with Astute Graphics’ powerful AI plug-in “VectorFirstAid” which gets rid of all those open or redundant anchor points. I love this part of the website design process so much, it reminds me that in 2021 I should allocate more of my design time for abstract illustrations. What do you think? I’d love to hear your feedback.