See What I Mean

How To Use Comics to Communicate Ideas

Kevin Cheng

• Publisher: Rosenfeld Media
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781933820279
• eBook ISBN: 9781933820859
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Design
• Subtopic: Graphic Design

If you're an executive, designer, product manager, marketer, or engineer, communication is part of your work. Using images and text in unique ways, comics can engage readers in ways traditional methods can't. In See What I Mean, you'll learn how to create comics about your products and processes without an illustrator—just like Google, eBay, and Adobe do.

CHAPTER 1

Comics?!

CHAPTER 2

Properties of Comics

Comics Around the World	17
Comics for Young and Old	18
Comic Formats	18
Anatomy of a Comic	19
The Four Properties of Comics	20
Summary	36

The word “comics” carries many connotations. In North America, the word is often synonymous with “cartoons” and considered to be something for children. For example, cartoons might be associated with Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, and X-Men or with Garfield, Calvin & Hobbes, and The Family Circus.

Merriam–Webster defines comics (or comic) as:

• comedian (a stand-up comic)
• the comic element
• a: comic strip, b: comic book, c (plural): the part of a newspaper devoted to comic strips

and subsequently defines a comic strip as:

• a group of cartoons in narrative sequence

While Sunday comics are a defining part of many people’s experience with comics, it only represents a fraction of what comics are. In my opinion, this definition is indicative of how comics are underappreciated as an art form and a communication medium. In fact, comics have had a long-standing worldwide cultural impact across all ages.

Comics Around the World

In Japan, comics are known as manga. They are seen as a popular and mainstream form of entertainment, covering a wide variety of topics, including sports, fantasy, romance, business, and education. The audience demographic is just as broad as the subject matter.

When best-selling author Daniel Pink was living in Tokyo, he noticed how prevalent manga was. As an experiment, he attempted to walk a city block without seeing somebody holding or reading a comic book—and failed. He was so inspired by this medium that he decided to write his next business book, The Adventures of Johnny Bunko, in comic form. In Chapter 8, “Applying Comics,” we’ll hear more from Daniel about his book and why comics worked for him.

Comics are quite popular in Europe as well. The Belgian series Adventures of Tin Tin and the French series Asterix were so popular that they were both translated into over 80 languages. Their longevity is equally impressive: Tin Tin first appeared in 1929, and its collections are still being reprinted today, while Asterix has been around since 1959 and is still running!

Comics for Young and Old

It may surprise you as it did me that a comic book was named Time Magazine’s Book of the Year. There’s nothing wrong with comics that are “just for kids”; I still thoroughly enjoy comic strips such as Foxtrot or Calvin & Hobbes, as well as the occasional superhero comic or movie. But in the last decade, a surge of comics tackling more serious subjects has emerged that can only be described as art. The New York Times recognized this trend by starting a Graphic Books Best Seller List category in 2009.

Even if you don’t end up drawing a single stick figure, I hope you check out some of these masterpieces. They can illustrate the power of the medium far better than I ever could and will entertain you at the same time. Their subject matter is as diverse as their art styles:

• Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, a memoir by Alison Bechdel, deals with sexual orientation, suicide, and complex family relationships. It’s the book that made the New York Times Best Seller List before there was a graphic books category and also won Book of the Year.

• 300 and Sin City are two comics by American writer and artist Frank Miller. One is a violent fictional retelling of the B...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• DEDICATION
• HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
• FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
• CONTENTS
• FOREWORD
• INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER 1 Comics?!
• CHAPTER 2 Properties of Comics
• CHAPTER 3 You Don’t Need to Be an Artist
• CHAPTER 4 What’s Your Comic About?
• CHAPTER 5 Writing the Story
• CHAPTER 6 Laying Out the Comic
• CHAPTER 7 Drawing and Refining
• CHAPTER 8 Applying Comics
• CHAPTER 9 Breaking Down the Barriers
• CHAPTER 10 Wrapping Up
• APPENDIX Useful Templates and References
• Index
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR
• Footnote