Losing control of comics: new narrative function in comic book design

Losing Control of Comics: New Narrative Function in Comic Book Design is a practice-based enquiry into the relationship between design and narrative within the comics format. This is a commentary model exegesis with a creative component consisting of 250+ pages of original comics, and a written component utilising a theoretical perspective based on Csikszenmihalyi’s Creative Systems Theory and Bourdieu’s Fields of Cultural Production. The project explores the role of graphic and publication design within the comic book format by analysing field theories, domain products and individual creative process. It utilises design principles – such as proximity and juxtaposition – design elements – typography and symbols – and publication techniques – printing and binding – to explicitly analyse comics’ narrative functions from a design perspective. The comic book format communicates narrative information through comics-specific graphic devices like speech bubbles and panels, and the creative component presents a complex, non-linear narrative with shifting perspectives involving dishonesty, hallucinations and nervous breakdowns. In order for this complex narrative to be communicated, the functions of these devices need to be established and amended, and sometimes repurposed into new devices altogether. This includes special panels that present memories or certain page layouts that represent dreams, which rely on an established control style for standard devices in order to create a sense of juxtaposition. The physical properties of the comic book as a published artefact are also utilised to create new narrative functions – such as selecting a juxtaposing printing method and paper stock within a bound insert to denote a shifting narrative perspective. The project presents new ideas as explicit theories within the written component and embodied examples within the creative component.