Bringing Brand Stories to Life With Illustrator Mayara Lista
Mar 25, 2021
3 min read
Mayara always connects her work to a story when illustrating comic-books, book-covers, and business websites.
Written by Sarah Jampen Almazan
Self-portrait by Mayara Lista
Brazilian artist Mayara Lista’s illustrations are never still. Their lively colors and movement make it seem as if her characters and cute critters are about to bounce right off the page, and out of your computer screen.
It’s this feeling of motion, and the intention of propelling a narrative forward with her drawings, that Mayara brings to her illustrations for Squarespace business websites such as Resolvve, Downtown Somatic Therapy, and Concierge Sedation.
Mayara Lista illustrating work for Detraform client Relay
If you’ve had a chance to browse her website, it will not surprise you to find out that Mayara’s love for drawing comes from watching cartoons and reading Japanese mangas.
Mayara worked as a comic book illustrator after graduating with a BA in Visual Communication Design from the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro before working in an animation studio, and eventually going on to illustrate book covers and branded websites as a freelancer.
Mayara is definitely not a one-trick pony. She experiments with many styles and is constantly researching new sources of inspiration. Recently, she has been looking to artists Roman Muradov and Maria Ines Gul for inspiration.
I’m always switching up my references, and right now this style has my attention. Their work is really simple but charismatic.
Every artist experiences creative blocks. When Mayara’s feeling stuck, she changes her situation from one where she feels like she needs to produce, to one where she feels free to learn and make mistakes. “I try a different medium. I use ceramics, I do needlework, or try to paint with different media. I try to go to a field that I know less about so that I can feel like I’m learning something, instead of feeling like I’m getting it wrong. I’ll put myself in a position where I’m a student again.”
Mayara certainly keeps things moving when it comes to learning new things and evolving her work, and has recently started a two years Master’s degree and intends to continue working on her comic books.
In between schoolwork and freelancing, Mayara still finds time to work on personal projects, which you can see by following her on Instagram @mayaralista. Before the Tokyo 2020 Olympics were canceled, she was working on a series of posters celebrating Brazil’s female athletes, feeling that they were under-represented compared to their male counterparts. “Just for fun, I did it as a way to try a different drawing style than I was used to on Adobe illustrator. So I trained as a sports illustrator, but I don’t know when I’m going to get to launch this project.”
Even when she’s stripping down her work to simple lines or silhouettes, Mayara is able to manipulate her illustration’s elements to represent key points in a narrative.
When I’m illustrating a brand’s website, I’m always thinking about the background story. I’ll bring elements that could make a visitor be curious or question why certain elements are there. Like why are these kids here, or why are they wearing these clothes? I’m looking to tell stories through details.
Take her work on the Downtown Somatic Therapy website: every character in the page’s composition has their very own transformational arc and invites the website visitor to imagine themselves achieving similar results. The tiniest details will give you hints of a character’s state of mind before and after they have consulted with DST’s therapists.
There has been a huge interest from businesses to leverage talented illustrators like Mayara for their brand identity and their online content.
More businesses are realizing that illustrations are a great way to show their personality. The scope of possibility is so big!
While e-commerce brands might prefer photography to showcase their products, services and SAAS companies can communicate more with an illustration. “Even banks started using illustration. I think that is the way things are going to go from now on. Brands want to differentiate themselves from others”