Comics ARE Graphic Design!

I tend to get into this debate allot when people ask me what I want to be when I'm 'older'. (they to tend to say 'grow up' but then I tend to ask them if they want said pint they have just paid for tipped over their heads?) I always say that I would love to, one day, be a Graphic Designer who works with image and illustration, mostly comic books. They tend to give me this dumbfounded look that comic book creation is not graphic design, to which I always think that they must be very ignorant or down right stupid.

These kind of debates where nearly always brought up by my ND Graphic Design tutor who would hate anything that was not to do with canals, birds or screen printing. All of which I'd rather see the back of. GO BIRD FLU! GO!

She would tell me that I was on the wrong course if I wanted to include an illustration in my work and would constantly call my comic books manga (japanese art form) to which I would get seriously annoyed.

Many of the illustrators that have Marvel Comics contracts have their background in Graphic Design. The art of making the comic book its self usually falls upon a team of five or more people. You have the writer, the script writer, the penicler, the inker, the coulourist, the type setter and so on and so forth. One person is not just handed a brief and told to come back in a month with a finished product. The effect would be simply terrible.

Alina Urosov is one my favourite female illustrators. She had this amazing abilty to simply make her work flow and her characters always look so flawless and liquid like, it's as if you are watching an animation instead.

See how the type setter hasn't had to awkwardly work around her work. They most likely only communicated over the phone or email but it always seems to work. Urosov has kept the typesetter in mind when she made her illustration.

And if that isn't a perfect exaple of graphic design and typography, hen I don't know what is.