What is comic book design: covering the basics

"What is design?

Design is an ever-present aspect of modern life. Everything from product packaging to cars, phones, newspapers, cars, phones, newspapers, websites, shop fronts, clothing, advertising, television, and the programs that appear on them has been to conscious and deliberate design.

More specifically, graphic design is said to be all about visual communication, and presentation, a discipline which combines symbols, images, and/or words to express ideas and messages.

That's not a bad definition of comics itself." Gary Spencer Millidge, Comic Book Design, p.8, Watson Guptill: New York, 2009

That isn't a bad definition of comic books, mainly because comic books are all about design. From character and location design to lettering and balloons passing by page layouts and visual storytelling (all covered in the book Comic Book Designs) comic books are about design. What makes them so close to design is they merge both written storytelling and artistic visual display.

When one looks at a comic book page, what can be seen is an obvious use of a grid, which is an important part of the visual style and storytelling. Then, looking into each square of the comics, one can see another type of grid mixing in a logical and efficient way the textual narration, the speech balloons and the graphic artwork. The design of the comic book has one main goal: telling a story. That's what comic books, and books do, tell a story.

Good comic design doesn't only tell a story, it tells it well. The writing, the scenario, that is all about effectiveness, but the design brings the efficiency to the comics. By designing the comic book page to designing the characters, all matters to tell the comic's story. Different design styles exist, and design has to work hand in hand with the story, the plot, the scenario and the artwork to do its job as perfectly as possible.