What our illustrations can do for you
Engaging with Readers
Engaging with readers and leaving a lasting impression can be difficult. In biomedical science you might be bombarded with hundreds of new research articles every day. You may have spent months or years on your piece of research, but just getting someone to click to your article is half the battle.
Stand out from the Crowd
Standing out from the crowd is hard. It’s particularly hard in an information saturated landscape. To get noticed you need a strong idea and creative advert that will capture attention and encourage conversation. Visuals can definitely help with this. If your viewer only sees you for a few seconds, they’ll probably remember the image the most.
Science, Art, Storytelling
Here at Vivid Biology, we blend together storytelling, composition, and a great understanding of science to create visuals that get to the heart of what your story is about. We understand that it’s not enough just to represent the science being mentioned. Artwork also has to help the reader grasp the tone, angle, and larger context of the science being discussed.
We have extensive scientific and artistic experience which allows us to produce artwork that will compliment your established branding, as well as create new identities for new products. Often the artwork we create is used as the basis for advertising campaigns and resized or reworked to fit all kinds of advertising sizes.
How we help you to combine science, art, and storytelling
The Brief
For illustrations to accompany a feature piece, we are usually sent through an early draft or brief synopsis of the themes to be covered. We’ll then work on some concept sketches for artwork ideas that we think grasp the key concepts. At this point it’s useful to know whether it’s a main cover illustration that’s required, or multiple smaller illustrations, so that we can adjust the complexity of the concept sketches. Some clients prefer to leave this decision until they see the ideas we present though.
Pencil Roughs
Once the sizes of the artworks and concept sketches have been agreed upon, we’ll work these up into pencil sketches. We’ll then forward these on to you to check if there are any edits that need to be made. Edits are much easier to make at the pencil stage than later on so it’s best to mention any now. We recommend that you narrate and record the audio in animations. Enthusiasm and expertise tend to come through more when it’s the scientists who did the research doing the narration. Voices are memorable, so it’s a nice reminder for when viewers meet you in person.
Inking the sketches
Once the pencil drafts are approved we’ll start inking up the illustration. We’ll then scan it into Photoshop and do a quick clean-up. At this stage we’ll check with you whether you want the illustration to be an infinitely scalable vector or to remain as a fixed size image. Vectors require the line art to be traced in illustrator, which can result in lines that look overly smoothed.
Adding Colour
We’ll then do a first round of colouring, and check in with a first draft. At this stage it’s easy to move some of the elements around, and to change the colours, although wholesale redrawing is much harder. Once the colour choices and any further changes are approved, we’ll send over a final version to the specifications that you require.
Final Artwork
We'll provide the artwork to you in any desired format.
Illustration for readers
Editorial illustration accompanies science feature and news articles in both mainstream media and more specialist publications. It aims to draw in the reader, concisely summarising the main themes of the article. Not only does it make the article more visually appealing, it also makes it more likely to be selected and shared online via social media.
We aim to help you stimulate interest and excitement in your science among the public giving it a broader perspective.
01
What does Vivid Biology offer?
We offer Illustrations and artwork to accompany text or act as a focal point in design.
02
Who are our clients for creative artwork?
We design creative artworks for Biotech, Advertising, Publishing, Journalism, Public engagement, and Education.
03
Why is a creative artwork important?
Creative artworks represent ideas, engage viewers, and communicate key messages.
How it works
Creative artwork
The Brief
We’ll want to know what the advertisement is for, who it’s aimed at, and where it’s going to appear. An advertisement at a biotechnology conference that features a big strand of DNA won’t exactly be a novelty. It’s important for us to get an idea of what landscape the advertisement will exist in, who you want to see it, and what THEY care about. For a big promotional illustration, the details of the product are undoubtedly important, but the crux of the artwork should be about how the product makes the user feel. This might be relief that even the tiniest impurity is detected, joy at how simple a product makes a tricky lab process, or the endless possibilities available now that they can get such accurate readings.
The Ideas stage
For a big promotional illustration, the details of the product are undoubtedly important, but the crux of the artwork should be about how the product makes the user feel. This might be relief that even the tiniest impurity is detected, joy at how simple a product makes a tricky lab process, or the endless possibilities available now that they can get such accurate readings.
Production of larger pieces
For big promotional illustrations, the drafts and concepts stage is often quite lengthy, and can take several weeks depending on how long it takes us to find a solution you’re happy with. Once we’ve found one we’ll get to work on creating the large scale final artwork.
Smaller artworks
We also work on much smaller projects, like individual event posters. These use illustration to summarise the key themes of the event with an image that stands out in the mind of the viewer (and also when stuck to notice boards).
Ballpark figures
Advertising artwork is charged in a similar way to illustration artwork. The price of the artwork is made up of the illustration fee and the licence fee. This means that a simple illustration that forms a worldwide campaign could end up being more expensive than a complex illustration for use at a single trade fair.
In general the licensing fee needs to be negotiated for each new project, particularly since exclusive rights might be needed, however for smaller pieces of promotion we can bundle it together. We can provide discounts for ongoing contracts, smaller events, and academia. If most of your poster is text we can price based on illustration size on the print.
Product
Size
Dimensions (cm)
Price (£)
Posters
Bespoke Artwork
Priced by artwork size
A4
A3
A2
21 x 29.7
29.7 x 42
42 x 59.4
250
400
700
Posters
Reuse of existing illustration
Priced by artwork size
A4
A3
A2
21 x 29.7
29.7 x 42
42 x 59.4
100
180
250
Large format advertising
Example 3m x 2m backdrop artwork
Concepts and ideas
Production
from 1000
from 2000