BookZenDesign · Illustrate · Publish

Product illustrations

Illustration beats photography for products more often than people expect: when the range is too large to shoot, when the product does not exist yet, when the interior matters more than the surface, or when every item has to look identical in treatment.

What this service covers

We illustrate products for catalogues, packaging, instruction manuals, e-commerce listings and sales material, working from CAD data, samples, photographs or design drawings.

The main advantage is consistency. A five-hundred-item catalogue illustrated to one standard looks coherent in a way that photography shot across three years and two studios never quite does.

Included in every project

Anything outside this list is quoted separately rather than assumed.

Catalogue artwork

Entire ranges illustrated to one angle, scale and lighting convention.

Packaging illustration

Artwork built to dieline with print process and substrate accounted for.

Cutaways and features

Internal construction and features revealed to support a sales claim.

Instruction artwork

Usage and assembly sequences drawn to work without translation.

Concept visualisation

Products rendered before they exist, for pitches and pre-launch material.

Icon and feature sets

Supporting icon families that match the illustration style.

Why clients commission this work

Consistency across a range

Every item drawn to the same angle, scale and treatment.

No photography logistics

No samples to ship, no studio to book, no reshoots.

Shows what a photo cannot

Internal structure, hidden features and pre-production designs.

Cheap to update

A variant colour or new size is an edit rather than a new shoot.

From brief to final files

Each stage has a clear approval point, so nothing large gets built on an assumption.

  1. Range review

    We look at the full product list and set the conventions once, up front.

  2. Pilot items

    Two or three products illustrated first to establish the standard.

  3. Batch production

    The range is illustrated in scheduled batches against that standard.

  4. Asset delivery

    Files supplied per product in the sizes and formats each channel needs.

Typical clients for this service

Briefs come from single projects and from teams commissioning at volume.

Manufacturers and distributors
Packaging and brand teams
E-commerce and catalogue retailers
Technical documentation teams
Industrial design studios

A sample of this kind of work

A sample of studio work in this category.

Before you brief us

Anything not answered here, ask directly and you will get a straight answer.

Ask a question

Photography wins on texture and material realism. Illustration wins on consistency, on showing internal structure, and on products that do not exist yet. Many catalogues use both.

Yes, and it is the most accurate route. STEP, IGES and DWG files are all usable as the geometric basis for illustration.

Per item, on a sliding scale by complexity, with the rate fixed once the pilot items establish the standard. Large ranges get a volume rate.

Yes. Send previous artwork and new items are drawn to match, so old and new sit together in the same catalogue.

Ready to brief this project?

Send the details and a scope, schedule and fixed quote come back within one working day.