Image by Thad Allen
I’m often asked to design in a particular “style.” Making pastiches and homages is always interesting, but trying to identify those elements that feel a certain way can often require more research than a simple image search.
Recently, I was tasked with designing a set of stickers for CrowdStrike and AWS in a “pop art style,” with a comic-booky 💥 POW! visual provided as reference. I immediately recognized the lineage of this kind of imagery—and rather than making a copy of a copy (generation loss, to use a visual metaphor) I wanted to take a few steps back to get undiluted inspiration.
Beyond Lichtenstein into the Silver Age of Comic Books
In the case of “comic-book-style pop art,” you can trace much of that back to Roy Lichtenstein, who famously adapted comic panels into oversized art print. But Lichtenstein himself is controversial—not least among the artists whose work he, er, appropriated. I’ve softened a bit on Lichtenstein’s oeuvre over time (especially after viewing some of his works in person on a recent trip to The Broad), but comparing his work to actual comic books immediately highlights that his coloring and lettering differs rather dramatically from what comics of the time looked like. My designs, therefore, would be stronger if I didn’t just look at Lichenstein’s work (e.g. Whaam!) but went further back to the Silver Age of Comic Books that he had been building on.
I keep my comic collection by my office workspace, so I was flipping through back issues in no time. I wasn’t so much looking for panels to copy, but rather trying to recognize patterns in the hand-lettered text of onomatopoeias (words that sound like the noises they describe, like “hiss” or “smash”) or the pulpy titles promising thrills and excitement.
I flipped through the iconic Marvel style of John Buscema’s Fantastic Four, the surrealism-infused flair of Jim Steranko’s Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., and really anything in my collection that had yellowed newsprint pages.
I also looked at later indie comics from artists raised on and building from the work of these Silver Age artists, the looming shadows of Mike Mignola’s Hellboy or the joyous retro-pop of Michael Allred’s Madman.
Keeping the POW! and adding a marketing twist
There were two factors in this particular project I had to keep in mind: the colors had to be the client’s modern brand—smooth-flowing gradients of purples, golds, and teals, a far cry from Lichtenstein’s primary paints or the dotted newsprint of comics. And the words wouldn’t be quick onomatopoeias like “BANG!” but rather short phrases that extolled cloud-readiness or security compliance that don’t lend themselves to exclamation points quite as well.
I pulled in some Comicraft font sets for an added feeling of authenticity. And because I had familiarized myself with what these comic-y words should look like, I felt much more confident when deciding how to position words and when to use the “wonk” settings to add visual interest.
Referencing captions rather than sound effects let me to use yellow boxes and unravelling scrolls to lead in text. I also wanted to recall some of the irregularity and energy of hand-rendering in the digital realm, often manually repositioning individual letters in a word.
Taking the time to understand the source and inspiration definitely made for a better final product!