Communicate Boldly. Deliver Clearly.

Campaign artwork and branded illustrations aligned with your message, built to engage audiences and scale across formats. From local promotions to global activations, visuals are crafted to resonate — in print, digital, or OOH media.

Visual Assets with Strategic Purpose

Inform Visually. Engage Intelligently.

Whiteboard graphics, business comics, and data-infused infographics designed to simplify complexity and enhance understanding. Perfect for explainer videos, training tools, onboarding, and internal communications.

Clarity Through Visual Thinking

Design That Builds Recognition.

From packaging to mascots, icons, and UX visuals — each asset is built for clarity, usability, and brand cohesion. Designed to perform across retail shelves, digital products, and animated environments.

Distinctive Design for Real-World Impact

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Commissioned Illustration · Commercial · Corporate · Institutional · Product · Visual Communication

Commissioned Illustration for Brands, Organisations & Visual Communication

This is the broadest category of my professional illustration work: images created for a specific client, subject, audience and use.

Some commissions become advertising or campaign visuals. Others are used in employee communication, healthcare, training, packaging, products, tourism, presentations, digital platforms, public information or branded environments. The format changes because the job changes.

35+ years professional illustration · Direct client & agency collaboration · English · French · German

Applied Illustration

Illustration made to do something

A commissioned image may need to explain a behaviour, make a technical subject approachable, give a campaign character, work without language, appear directly on a product or simply make someone stop and look. There is no single visual style that is right for all of those situations.

Communicate

Corporate, internal and institutional illustration for ideas, policies, behaviour, services and subjects that need a human visual language.

Explain

Visual material for training, education, technical communication and subjects where a drawing can show something more clearly than text alone.

Identify

Characters, visual motifs and illustration systems that give a company, initiative or project a recognisable visual personality.

Apply

Artwork made for actual formats: packaging, products, posters, outdoor media, interfaces, presentations, merchandise, print and motion.

Selected Commissioned Work

Different clients. Different audiences. Different jobs.

These projects show why I prefer “commissioned illustration” as the broad category. They have little in common as formats, but each began with a real communication problem and a defined use.

Coca-Cola and IGORA recycling comic illustrations printed directly on beverage cans by Ian David Marsden
Coca-Cola / IGORA — wordless recycling comics printed directly on cans.

Product · Public Communication · Sequential Illustration

Coca-Cola / IGORA — recycling stories on the can itself

For Coca-Cola Switzerland and IGORA Recycling, I created short comic sequences about aluminium recycling that were printed directly onto cans.

The stories were designed to work without explanatory copy, so the action had to remain immediately understandable across languages. Here the product was also the medium.

Corporate · Internal Communication · People

Mercedes-Benz — employee communication through recognisable situations

For Mercedes-Benz, I illustrated an employee guide using people, character and everyday workplace situations rather than presenting the material solely as abstract rules.

The illustrations give the communication a direct human context while remaining appropriate to a major international company.

View the Mercedes-Benz project →

Mercedes-Benz illustrated employee communication by Ian David Marsden
Mercedes-Benz — illustrated employee communication.
Dräger infection prevention illustration by Ian David Marsden using a classic car cleaning analogy
Dräger — infection-prevention communication using familiar visual analogies.

Healthcare · Technical Communication · Training

Dräger — making technical subjects easier to enter visually

My work for Dräger used illustration to introduce infection-prevention and hygiene subjects through familiar situations, humour and visual analogy.

The imagery could move between everyday life and clinical environments without reducing the seriousness of the subject.

View the Dräger project →

Multilingual · Behaviour · Sequential Communication

SUSTAIN-D — energy-efficiency comics for multilingual audiences

For SUSTAIN-D, I created short visual stories explaining energy-efficient behaviour in multilingual housing environments.

The comics were designed so the core message could be understood without depending on written language. Some panels include numerals or short labels, but actions, consequences and character behaviour carry the main information.

View the SUSTAIN-D project →

SUSTAIN-D energy-efficiency comic illustration by Ian David Marsden designed for visual communication across language contexts
SUSTAIN-D — visual communication designed for multilingual audiences.
Oskar workplace safety character designed by Ian David Marsden for seele GmbH
seele — Oskar, a recurring character for workplace-safety communication.

Character · Safety · Training · Multi-Format

seele — one character across an ongoing safety programme

For seele, I developed Oskar, a recurring safety character used across training, presentations, signage and animated communication.

The character gives a long-running communication programme a consistent visual presence while allowing individual safety subjects to be shown through concrete situations.

View the Oskar project →

Selected Case Studies

Illustration solving different communication problems

These projects show commissioned illustration working across technical explanation, internal communication, public information and multilingual film production.

Mycotrition

Six illustrated motion-graphics films explaining mushroom cultivation, processing and quality management in German, English and French.

View case study →

Hawlik

Ten illustrated explainer films turning cultivation, laboratory, product and sustainability information into concise visual stories.

View case study →

Mercedes-Benz

Character-led illustration for an employee communication manual, making service culture and professional behaviour visible through recognisable situations.

View case study →

SUSTAIN-D

Energy-saving comics designed to communicate primarily through images so the core message could work across language and literacy contexts.

View case study →

Henkel

Information-driven illustration and infographic work developed to make complex corporate and technical subjects easier to understand.

View in Case Studies →

A Wider Range of Applications

The gallery goes well beyond those five examples

Other commissions in the archive show illustration moving into education, human resources, tourism, digital systems, packaging, merchandise, animation and products.

Software Engineering Essentials

A physical developer-training deck combining illustration, graphic design and technical education across 60 cards and packaging.

PPHO / In Talent We Trust

Illustration and character work for human-resources communication, including a deliberately reinvented Uncle Sam and other campaign imagery.

Fraunhofer

A character representation of Joseph von Fraunhofer developed for animation, presentations, brochures and corporate communication.

Pic Saint-Loup

BD-style characters and humorous visual storytelling developed for regional tourism posters in Occitanie.

Slamtown

Large-format vector illustration created for wrestling merchandise, T-shirts and the “Mayor of Slamtown” identity.

Digital & Motion Projects

Illustrated assets and characters for web interfaces, SaaS communication, animation, games and motion-led projects including iShepherd and the New York Friars Club.

The Brief Determines the Drawing

I do not force every commission into the same style

A Coca-Cola recycling strip, a healthcare image for Dräger, a developer-training card and a tourism poster do not need to look as though they came from the same campaign.

What should remain consistent is the thinking behind them: understand the audience, understand the format, find the appropriate visual idea, and produce artwork that works where it is actually going to be used.

Direct Collaboration

From visual problem to finished artwork

I work directly with companies, agencies, designers, publishers and communication teams. Some projects arrive with a detailed creative brief; others begin with a subject or communication problem that still needs to be turned into an image.

Depending on the assignment, I can develop concepts and roughs, explore different visual approaches, refine the chosen direction and produce finished artwork ready for print, digital use, packaging, presentation or motion.

Every commissioned image is drawn specifically for its project. I do not substitute stock illustration, templates or AI-generated commissioned imagery for original artwork.

Commissioning original illustration

If you have a project in mind, send me a short outline of what needs to be communicated, who will see it and where the finished illustration will be used.

You do not need to arrive with the visual solution already worked out.

Extended Archive

Commissioned Illustration & Applied Visual Work

A broader archive of commissioned work for companies, agencies, institutions and organisations: commercial and corporate illustration, advertising, product graphics, training, packaging, characters, tourism, digital projects, motion assets and other visual communication. Click an image to enlarge it.

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