Case Study: Vinaty. Website Illustrations for Wine Service

“Beer is made by men, wine by God,” Martin Luther is claimed to have said once, and our fresh design story will also touch that theme. In this article, we unveil the creative process for the set of illustrations made for Vinaty, the service that helps visitors search for wines all over the world. The new illustration case study will let you dive into the sunny atmosphere of vineyards and feel the taste of good wine. Enjoy the vibe!

Client and Project

Vinaty is the marketplace that lets its customers search for wines from all over the world or sell the wines they produce. It’s open for everyone from the wine world, from distributors and importers to wineries and agents. The clients already had the brand identity, corporate colors, and the website they designed and strived to make communicative and good-looking, particularly by integrating a variety of custom illustrations reflecting the nature of the offered services and setting the specific mood.

That was a task assigned for the tubik illustrator and graphic designer Yaroslava Yatsuba and project manager Yana Potapovych.

Illustration Process

The redesign of Vinaty website was planned to be airy and minimalistic, so illustrations had to work as a primary tool of visual storytelling and service presentation. The illustration set had to include:

hero illustration for the home page of the website
illustrations for info sections
background illustrations
minor images for interaction and communication goals
icons

One more important objective set for the illustrations was an emotional appeal to set the friendly and warm atmosphere to let the website stand out from the typical business-like design. The color palette had to be based on the existing branding, so the illustrator extended it in harmony with already chosen colors.

The creative process for each illustration started from sketches reflecting the idea and composition, which were discussed, agreed upon, or edited if needed and then transformed into a polished colorful picture.

Sketches set for Vinaty project

The way from basic digital sketch to the colored illustration

For the hero illustration, the illustrator strived to set the general atmosphere of wineries, transferred via the landscape warmed up with the golden setting sun. Instead of typical buildings or constructions, the triggering objects are used as details associated with the theme, such as wine glasses, trees transforming into bottles, a basement with barrels, grapevines, and leaves. The whole illustration is built on smooth, overflowing, almost liquid shapes, setting the association with the wine flowing down the glass sides.

The illustrations below were created to beautify the profile web page until the users hadn’t added graphics and information about the brand. These artworks feature low contrast as they play the role of fillers instead of informative pieces, and will gradually disappear while the page is filled with information.

And here’s a glance at the illustration process in live mode, inscribed into the basic template of the webpage to see how they work together.

Some illustrations were created targeting the specific category of the website users. For example, users saw different illustrations by registering as a winemaker or as a wine distributor.

Some illustrations featured people characters, this way adding a solid human element to the service communication via the website.

And here’s a glance at some illustrations used across the website to present various content blocks. They feature diverse visual details, instantly connecting with the theme of making, buying, and enjoying wine.

In general, this design story and collaboration case with Vinaty was a pure reflection of the idea once stated by Josh Porter: “Don’t make something unless it’s both necessary and useful. But if it is both necessary and useful, don’t hesitate to make it beautiful.”

New design case studies from our team are coming soon. Stay tuned!