The Top 5 Flat Fee Custom Illustration Services

TL;DR

Illustrations help establish a brand’s unique personality. An easy way to tackle them is through flat fee custom illustration services. Let’s talk about the 5 best-rated subscriptions in the segment.

Graphic design is everywhere. From ads on newspapers to the billboards you drive by, those display ads you see on websites to interstitial ads when using apps. Beyond advertising, even to grow a business and steadily market it in a competitive market, design has a pivotal role to play. Amidst such competition, custom illustrations are a great way to express the brand’s unique personality. As brands look for reliable, scalable ways to tackle their illustration needs, flat fee custom illustration services have become a practical solution for creating consistent, on-brand visuals.

Custom illustrations matter because they have the power to show who you truly are. The power to reflect your business’s values and unique story, over which you build long-lasting customer relationships. 

From wearing your unique style to capturing your brand’s tone of voice, custom illustrations can be fine-tuned to accurately capture the essence of your brand. 

However, finding the right illustrator for the job is one thing brands struggle with. That’s where a flat fee custom illustration service comes into the picture. In this blog, let’s explore the top five options – KIMP, ManyPixels, Design Pickle, Delesign, and Design Shifu, to see which flat fee custom illustration service best suits your brand.

But before that, let’s first talk about the value of custom illustration in marketing and then get to our list.

Custom Illustrations: Why Do Businesses Need Them?  

What are custom illustrations for brands? Custom illustrations are artworks you create or commission to closely reflect your brand’s personality, visual identity, and offerings. It differs greatly from graphic design, such that it is purely artistic and a visual representation of your ideas. Textual and visual content together make up graphic design works. 

Custom illustration sounds like a simple term, but its applications are endless. Starting with a unique illustrated icon to feature in your logo to a mascot that humanizes your brand, illustrations come in all shapes and sizes. It’s not just that; illustrations can also be handy in representing data impactfully through infographics, thumbnails for videos, and social media posts that define your core aesthetics. 

Brands like Duolingo, Headspace, and Slack are good examples of leveraging the power of illustration in branding. The success of these brands and the instant recognition their brand illustrations receive are proof that having a detailed brand illustration system is a great way to establish your brand’s identity in a crowded market. 

So yes, we are talking about having such extensive brand illustration systems and not just one or two illustrations. While freelance illustrators can help tackle one-off illustration requests, you need something more long-term, something more reliable to create a cohesive brand illustration system. That’s where a flat fee custom illustration service makes a big difference. 

The Top 5 Flat Fee Custom Illustration Services 

Unlimited design services operate in a subscription-based model with flat-fee plans that cost a fixed monthly price. 

You get access to a qualified and diverse design team, while the flat fee allows you to execute your projects at a predictable cost. So, it is a worthy investment that only helps your business grow. 

There are many prominent names in the market, and the coming sections will give you a snapshot of all you need to know to make a choice. This blog is all you need to choose a flat fee custom illustration service for your business. 

1. KIMP

Although new in the design subscription service industry, KIMP has a long association with the graphic design world and has been a popular choice for flat fee custom illustration. Founded in 2003, KIMP pivoted into the design subscription model in early 2019.

KIMP’s global team of designers is well-versed in diverse design categories, including custom illustration. Working in different time zones to meet the needs of businesses around the world, KIMP’s illustrators make it possible for brands to start small and expand their brand design portfolio quickly and efficiently. 

With KIMP you get a dedicated design team of designers and illustrators with different niche specialties and a project manager. 

How it works 

KIMP’s project collaboration happens through the custom project management platform, KIMP360. This brings all your communication and creative workflow to one place. 

As soon as you sign up, you gain access to your dashboard on KIMP360. This is where you create your Brand Profiles to maintain an inventory of your brand assets. This gives a good starting point when you start placing your design requests. 

Select from request templates or create them from scratch. The AI-assisted features embedded throughout help simplify the process. 

You can also add team members, rearrange task priorities, keep track of the progress and access completed files and provide design feedback all within KIMP360. 

Pricing 

KIMP has 3 different plans for brands that need graphic designs, video design and editing or both. If you are looking for a flat fee custom illustration service, then KIMP Graphics and KIMP Graphics + Video are the plans for you. 

KIMP Graphics is priced at $1397/month and includes almost all kinds of graphic designs and custom illustrations for various branding and marketing applications. So, if you are looking to create your brand identity from scratch, starting with logo and brand mascot to your entire brand illustration system, then this plan covers it all. 

KIMP Graphics + Video plan priced at $1697 per month covers all the graphic designs and illustrations included in the Graphics plan and short video design and editing too. 

All of these plans come with a dedicated design team, a project manager, unlimited brands, free stock images, website, app and UI design and access to source files. 

Client reviews  

Why choose KIMP for flat fee custom illustration?

• KIMP’s pricing model is straightforward making it easy to choose the plan that suits your requirements. 
• In addition to the broad scope, KIMP also offers a wide range of benefits with all its plans without additional costs. For instance, access to KIMP360 or even a dedicated design team working on 3 active requests at a time (with KIMP Graphics). 
• KIMP360 is user-friendly and it simplifies communication between brands and their dedicated design team.
• KIMP offers a 7-day free trial. While brand mascots and character designs are not covered in the trial, you can use this risk-free 7-day period to explore the ease of collaborating with KIMP and the creative upgrade a dedicated design team brings. 

What is missing when you choose KIMP? 

• There’s no dedicated plan for custom illustrations alone if that’s what you are looking for. 

2. ManyPixels

ManyPixels is another popular unlimited design service that caters to a wide range of graphic design and motion graphics requests. 

The company offers customized solutions for startups and small businesses at a competitive rate. All 4 plans offered by ManyPixels cover unlimited designs, unlimited revisions, native source files and free stock assets, similar to KIMP. 

How it works

• You gain access to their dashboard to make requests, upload your existing design asset, create brand profiles, and submit revisions on the output they submit. 
• Once you sign and submit your request, the designer/design team connects with you and takes it ahead. 
• The base plans do not come with a dedicated designer but if you do need a designated designer or design team, there are plans that cover this as well. 
• Like other unlimited design services, all communication and collaboration happens within your dashboard. 

Pricing 

ManyPixels now has 4 plans –

• Advanced – $599 per month 
• Business – $999 per month 
• Designated Designer – $1299 per month 
• Design Team – $2399 per month

The core difference between the Advanced and Business plans is that the former delivers 1 daily output and the latter delivers 2 daily designs. Additionally, if you are looking for flat fee custom illustration, both these plans get the job done. The Business plan, however, adds motion graphics and video editing to the scope. 

However, these plans do not cover real-time Slack nor do they come with a dedicated designer or design team. If these matter to you then you need the Designated Designer or Design Team plan. . 

Client reviews

Why choose ManyPixels as your flat fee custom illustration service provider?

• ManyPixels offers some affordable plans for teams with limited design requirements. 
• Some plans offer same-day delivery of designs. 
• All of ManyPixels’ plans include a variety of graphic designs and web design services. 
• They have a developed database of free illustrations so that you can understand their style before committing to them. 

What’s missing in ManyPixels?

• The entry-level plans do not come with a dedicated design team. So if you wish to maintain consistency, you need the higher-priced Designated Designer or Design Team plans. He former only comes with a single dedicated designer and the latter adds 1 more at nearly double the cost. On the other hand, many other unlimited design services offer these as a part of the subscription at no extra cost. 
• Slack integration is not possible with the basic plans.  

3. Design Pickle 

Design Pickle has been in the design industry for the last six years and has experience with many unique businesses. It offers unlimited revisions and 100% original and authentic artwork created from scratch.

Design Pickle’s custom illustration service allows you to create customized and semi-realistic/realistic designs that suit your brand. The process to raise a request is also quite simple. 

How it works 

• Once you sign up, you gain access to the Design Pickle platform to send your design requests. 
• All plans come with a dedicated design team that works to ensure consistency across your designs. 
• Submitting requests, requesting revisions, managing your designs all happen on the Design Pickle platform. 

Pricing 

Unlike most other unlimited design services with different plans, Design Pickle offers one single plan with multiple add-ons like creative services, Pro version of the platform and customizable daily hours. Tweaking these details adds to the monthly bill. 

Design Pickle’s plans start from $1799 for creative services and a standard base fee of $119 for their platform, which adds up to $1,918 when paid monthly, or $1600/month when paid quarterly or $1279/month when paid annually.

If you want to add professional services (which come with a Production Coordinator and Art Director to your team), that would add an extra $2000 per month.

Client reviews

Why choose Design Pickle?

• Design Pickle has a large team of global designers making it easier for brands across the world to collaborate conveniently. 
• The turnaround time is quite good for custom illustrations. 
• The Design Pickle platform makes collaboration so much easier. 
• You get a dedicated design team to ensure consistency. 
• You can also create unlimited brand profiles to get customized brand illustrations.  

What’s missing in Design Pickle? 

• The base plan does not come with a Production Coordinator and Art Director. Adding Professional services costs an extra $2000 per month. 
• Some of the add-ons can be confusing, especially when choosing between the Base and Pro versions of the platform. Or even tweaking the daily hours. 
• Since there is no trial period, you do not get a hang of what these small differences make, and hence making a decision might feel difficult. 

4. Delesign

Delesign started as a venture to help businesses outsource their design and scale without hassle. Expanding its offerings steadily, the company today caters to a variety of services besides graphic design like web development and SEO writing.

One of the main perks is that almost all its plans cover simple illustrations. 

How it works

• When you sign up for the service, you can add your design requests on their custom platform. The company then matches you with a designer who will work for you the best. 
• You can choose the shift for your designer and can also change them if it doesn’t work out for you. 
• Most plans come with a turnaround time between 2-3 days for simple designs. Depending on the complexity of your illustration request, the turnaround time varies. You can keep track of the progress on the platform. 
• Once you review the design and finalize it, you can download the design from the portal. 

Pricing Model

For graphic design and motion graphics, Delesign has 3 plans: Graphic Designer ($599/month), Multimedia Specialist ($799/month), and Enterprise Plan ($1799/month).

Custom illustration is part of all 3 plans but the design output volume varies. Because only the Enterprise Plan comes with 2 dedicated designers, while the other two only come with a single dedicated designer working on all your projects. 

Client reviews

Why choose Delesign as a flat fee custom illustration service?

• Delesign provides 24×7 customer support. 
• To ensure that the assigned designer is available close to your time zone, Delesign has both day and night time schedules. 
• All plans offers the convenience of Slack collaboration and full ownership of designs. 

What’s missing in Delesign?

• The scope of custom illustrations that Delesign can take care of is limited. 
• While most design services offer a dedicated design team, Delesign only assigns 1 designer with its Graphic Designer and Multimedia Specialist plans and 2 in its Enterprise Plan. A single designer working on all your requests means a single active request at any given time and this can affect the design output volume in the long run. 

5. Design Shifu

Founded in 2018, Design Shifu has helped business owners take their marketing designs to the next level. With its affordably priced plans, this is a great flat fee custom illustration service for small businesses with a tight budget. 

How it works

• Design Shifu has an easy-to-use dashboard where you can manage your account and place your design requests.
• Once you place your request, your designated designer works on it.
• The number of active requests on your dashboard depends on the plan you choose.
• Once your design is ready, you can either download it along with the source files or place a revision request through your dashboard again.

Pricing model

Design Shifu offers 3 plans, namely Starter ($399/month), Growth ($599/month) and Scale ($1499/month).

The Starter plan covers only the basic types of marketing designs but does not include landing pages, GIFs, illustrations, and presentations. So if you need custom illustrations, you need to choose either the Growth or Scale plan. 

For most of these plans, there is a turnaround time of 24 hours for basic graphic designs. For shorter turnaround times, you can discuss with the Design Shifu team regarding add-ons. All plans also come with 2 dedicated designers and an account manager. 

Client reviews

Why choose Design Shifu as your flat fee custom illustration service?

• Design Shifu lets you customize your plans by customizing the number of active design requests at an additional cost. 
• All plans support unlimited brands and unlimited team members. 
• Design Shifu provides 24×7 customer support. 
• Most simple designs are delivered within 24 hours but yes complex illustrations might take longer. 
• All the plans offered come with a 14-day money-back guarantee to help you get a refund if you are not happy with the process or the quality of work.
• All plans come with a designated designer and project manager to make the collaboration more convenient.

What’s missing in Design Shifu?

• While the Growth plan does come with 2 dedicated designers, the default option of 1 active request can limit the design output volume. 

Selecting one out of the five very eminent names can be tough, but it boils down to your requirements. 

FAQs: Flat Fee Custom Illustration Services

Choosing the Right Flat Fee Custom Illustration Service for You

Design Pickle delivers great quality illustrations but can be expensive. ManyPixels can take care of various types of illustrations but working with a dedicated designer means paying extra. 

Delesign offers a wide range of services, including SEO writing but has a limited scope when it comes to custom illustrations. Design Shifu has affordably priced plans, but you have to pay extra in order to get additional active design requests.

So, if you want clear pricing, multiple active design requests and a dedicated design team all without having to pay extra, then KIMP feels like a practical choice. 

Sign up for a 7-day free trial today!