Michael Dooley talks to British comic creator and graphic designer Rian Hughes, whose book Yesterday’s Tomorrows was one of the more interesting compendiums of last year:
Dooley: You were part of the 1980s renaissance in which comic books began to demonstrate an awareness of graphic design and other outside influences. How did that coincide with your personal artistic growth?
Hughes: I think it was a realization that comics were, in essence, just words and pictures.
The Europeans seemed to be producing work that, while not always rigorously written, was much broader in terms of styles and content than the material popular in the U.S.—and to a lesser extent the U.K.—market.
Coming from outside comics, from the broader design world, it’s easy to see how comic book design is mired in cliché. It’s a much more varied and exciting scene now, but back then bold and sharp work by people like Dean Motter and Richard Bruning was the exception.
It was also that, due to the close-knit comics social scene, I naturally was the “go-to” guy for a lot of comic publishers who needed a designer.
