Vector illustration

Character

Muller-Wegner: Illustration duo. This character done in such a way to make it look 3D through clever use of gradients.

Dr. Ponce: Really nice use of shape and limited colour palette. 

Tim McDonagh: Really intricate linework combined with flat block colours makes this work stand out

Stephen Cheetham: Characters dressed in fabrics produced by a company called Stib19. Good and interesting use of mixing scanned textures with vectors

Sequential

Publishing

Editorial

Stuart Holmes: Good use of a single gradient among other bits of flat colour

Malika Favre: Cover illustration for Fabric that also makes similar use of gradients as Holmes' illustration, but combining the shading with gradient also makes the image nice.

Another Example: Really interesting use of shape to create tone which I've personally never encountered before.

Jan Kallwejt: Limited colour palette and complimentary use of colours.

Thomas Danthony: More intricate use of colour/gradient and details to create more depth.

Packaging

Promotion

Chris Ede: Promotional web image for Ford. Complex designs, but use of minimal colours makes the images aesthetically pleasing.

Andrew Lyons: Selective use of texture to differentiate between different surfaces in the shapes. For a dinosaur-theme show at a gallery in Amsterdam

Jeffrey Bowman: Nice use of line and shape, though both could potentially work independent of each other

Lotta Nieminem: Promo image for Volkswagen. Slight use of texture to give more traditional feel to otherwise very typical vector imagery.

Koichi Fujii: I'm not sure what exactly this image is for but I like the mixed use of vector shapes and hand drawn type.

http://www.illustrationweb.com/styles/vector