One of my favorite aspects of comics in general are covers, as they can add so much to a comic when they work and they can make you not purchase a comic if they don’t. It’s an artform that has advanced quite a bit since comics came around, and in recent years, designers like Tom Muller have been pushing them in truly unique ways. The previously Eisner-nominated Muller has had a banner 2013, designing the look of both Jeff Lemire’s “Trillium” and Ales Kot’s “Zero” and redefining what comic covers can do in the process.
I reached out to Tom, and we talk about the power of the comic cover, how he first got into comics, his process on “Zero”, and much more. Thanks to Tom for chatting with me, and enjoy the process work Tom shared from “Zero” as well!
You’re someone who has had a lot of history doing prominent design work outside of comics, but you’re also an Eisner nominee and providing design on two prominent projects in Zero and Trillium right now. What draws you in to working on comics? Are you a comic fan yourself?
Tom Muller: I’ve always been a comic fan. I grew up on a diet of (being from Belgium) European comics. My dad bought me my first super hero comic when I was 6 or 7 (a Spider-Man issue featuring the Rocket Racer, drawn by Ross Andru) and I’ve been hooked since. Throughout my teens I’d spend my spare time making up my own superheroes and comics, dreaming of a life as a comic artist. However, by the time I was studying graphic design in college my love for design took over and I’ve been extremely lucky to find my way back into comics through design, from working with Ashley Wood in the early 00s to collaborating with Ales Kot on ZERO (see: Tom’s Pinterest page for comic design work).
In terms of comic design, what books have stood out as particularly well done to you from a design standpoint from both today and the past?
TM: The one thing that caught my eye even as a kid were the series logos on covers. I read translated comics in Dutch, so they’d butchered the original logo and replaced it with a rush job, and by the time I was able to understand English I’d search out US imports so I could get “the real thing”. I was a huge Hulk fan (I grew up reading the Herb Trimpe and Sal Buscema runs) and I still love the cover treatments and those Golden Age cover blurb treatments. In terms of design, you can’t not mention Jim Steranko, but that was just before my time and I’ve only come to appreciate when I was a bit older. I think the 80s were a very fertile ground for comic cover design — DC prestige format books, Marvel’s EPIC line and graphic novels … Also, European comics always put a lot of effort in publication design by default (I’m thinking of Metal Hurlant, Moebius, in particular now) so I was exposed to two very different strands of design. One of my favourite comic designs of recent years has to be THE FILTH, which was so unapologetically “not comics” — something I really loved about the series; and that approach in look has been continued on NOWHERE MEN, in design approach at least, and I think what Jared Fletcher has done unifying the X books at Marvel is great piece of design thinking. Same goes for Rian Hughes’ Valiant rebranding: injecting modern design thinking into comics, understanding the medium without being a slave to its heritage and idiosyncrasies of what people think a comic should look like.
Recently, it feels like the production value of comics as overall products – especially at Image on books like Nowhere Men, but also elsewhere – has risen dramatically. Back covers aren’t just places for ads anymore, they now house storytelling or added elements to the overall aesthetic of the book. What do you think is driving that trend, and how do you feel it’s changing comics as a product, overall?
Continued belowTM: In ZERO’s case, the back cover design happened purely by accident because the page count was miscalculated and we “lost” the IFC to story so we pushed the credits to the back cover (indeed, like Nowhere Men), and I then decided that we could use it to our advantage to really create an end-to-end product, where the back cover acts like the end titles of each issue. Generally speaking, I think the trend in more design-savvy products is a (long overdue) natural evolution of publication design in comics, where – I hope – we’re finally moving away from being slaves to design effects (look at the glut of 90s-early 00s), and we’re seeing that, especially in independent comics, creators are more clued in when it comes to design. I’ve always said that you should treat comics like any other magazine publication, where you see a constant cycle of redesign to stay current, instead of trying to maintain a status quo and repeating the same design idioms over and over again, because there seems to be an unwritten rule as to what comics should look like. Comics have the unique ability to combine the best of everything — storytelling, art, writing, and design — so why not exploit that.
Zero is a brilliant book, but your design work definitely helps push it to the next level. How did you get onboard with that project, and what appeals to you about it as a designer? Also, on Zero, you’re working with artists like Tradd Moore, Michael Walsh and Christian Ward to craft these covers. How do you approach the design on these covers? Do you work closely with those artists from the start, do you just work around what they create, or is it something different?
TM: A few months ago (I’ve been working on ZERO since February ’13) I was looking for an email Ales sent me and I discovered a message he sent me in 2010 (we we’re both posting on Warren Ellis’ Freakangels forum at the time), saying it’d be cool to maybe one day collaborate on something. Fast forward 2.5 years and Ales asked me if I was interested in ZERO, and explained the concept of the series and the rotating artists. Initially I was going to be the sole cover designer/artist, but as the book progressed (we’re talking a few months before the first issue was solicited) we decided that it’d be wiser from a commercial point of view to include artwork from the issue’s artist instead of going 100% design-only; especially because its was the launch of a new series and we didn’t want to alienate people who might be taken aback by a pure design cover. We now work in, still, a very design-led setup where I’ll use a B/W illustration from the artist of the issue to design the cover instead of the traditional scenario where I have to slap a logo in the top 1/3 of the cover without touching the art. The art becomes another element in the cover design, instead of the traditional way of working where the cover artists creates a piece, often leaving you only with the top 1/3 of a cover to work with.
Each issue has a different artist, and like with the interiors and Jordie Bellaire, you’re the common factor on each cover. When it comes to designing these covers, how do you create a consistent, unified feel with a different artist each issue?
TM: The design of each issue is first and foremost based on the themes of any given issue. The first issue was set in the Gaza Strip, so I researched drone cams and satellite imagery of the region etc which informed the distorted design of the cover. Issue two referenced the IRA, so the covers referenced pamphlets and posters of that era in Ireland, the Shanghai issue is designed like a Chinese glossy magazine, four is set in the favelas of Rio, so looks like slum graffiti, and so forth. That makes it interesting for me as a designer to keep exploring the look of the series, and when we have variant covers or 2nd printings I purposefully design them similarly, so each issue has a little ‘collection’ of covers that belong together and in the process hopefully creates a set of comic covers that don’t look like anything else on the shelves.
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You designed the logo for Zero, and it’s an element that many people don’t really actively think about unless it’s an absolute classic or it’s notably awful. What did you want to convey with the titling of this book, and how extensive of a process was finding the right one?
TM: The typeface choice for the ZERO logo — ITC Machine — was a fairly straight-forward choice for me because I wanted to use a font that suited the genre of the book, but that had been around long enough that it wouldn’t immediately be out of place or something that looked too trendy or sci-fi. In a way it can be very neutral and it allows me to treat it in a variety of ways. Sometimes I’ll use it almost as-is (cover for #3), other times I’ll treat it extensively (#1, #4) or a mix in between. The last thing I wanted was a font that was too effects-based or a stereotypical “Sci-fi” font, which you still see happening all over the place. The neutrality of the logo allows me to mould it for each issue without losing its character.
As someone who works on many a comic cover, what do you feel makes a good comic cover, and what do you feel are the common pitfalls of a bad one?
TM: I think I already brought up some points. The primary pitfall in comic cover design in my opinion is how so many are stuck in a self-created bubble where comic covers are still designed the exact same way as they always have. Sure a series logo might get updated from time to time, but they’re generally still adhering to a very limited perception (stuck in tradition?) that dictates a comic can only have a logo in the top 1/3 of the cover, that the cover needs to stick to genre stereotype and add as much Photoshop filters as possible to make it “POP!” because thats what the fans apparently want. Its the same apprehension to change you see in the Hollywood machine where every comedy film title is set in Futura Extra Bold and every sci-fi or fantasy film uses metal-brushed Bank Gothic; so it was nice to see Christopher Nolan bucking that trend with the Interstellar teaser. But I digress. The point I’m making is that comics are, and should be incredibly malleable. Readers and fans will respond to good and cool design, just as they do to a great story and artwork. Cover design is as much a part of the comic you’re reading than the whats on page one. You start the experience when you pick up the book. I’m really pleased to see comics, especially independent comics, push things slowly forward, eschewing the expected design paradigms and effects-laden designs for something that is more pure — and therefore much stronger visually. Thats what I try to do with ZERO at least.
I mentioned previously that design work is getting progressively more important, especially in the creator-owned world. As comic design continues to evolve, how important, if at all, do you feel it is to keep classic elements present or at least considered as influences?
TM: The classic elements are all still there: series and publisher logos, credits, numbering, the lot – its just a matter of applying those elements in a considered and rational manner. If you look at magazines (anything from Wired to Vogue if you will) you can see those elements as well, but you also see how year on year things are updated; and if you compare covers of Wired in 2001 to the latest issue on the stands you’re looking at two completely different things. A super hero comic that was released this week essentially looks exactly the same as one that was released in 1995. I do love looking at, and re-reading my old comics and examine the craft of hand-lettering logos and the typographic treatments of the cover blurbs, but I also realise they’ve served their time and sensibilities have moved on (as they should). I think its very important to remember those classic influences, because as with everything else you can only move forward when you know your (design) history.
