Here in Hungary, comic books are still largely considered as kids’ entertainment: simple, illustrated stories that are no match to “real” books in terms of storyline or characters. While the yearly avalanche of Marvel & DC movies is slowly transforming the country’s comic book-culture, comics are still very underrated because most people don’t even take the effort to actually open a comic and read some pages of it. When I look at a comic book, what I see is not only panels and speech bubbles — I see a brilliant way of storytelling full of unique ideas and creative approaches, something that could be a great analogy to corporate communications as well. Keep reading, you’ll get my point soon!
Every comic book has a given storyline, a hero and some principles or “rules” that can not be altered. Take Daredevil for example: no matter which issue you are reading (out of the hundreds of Daredevil comics published so far), you simply know from the first moment that this guy is Matt Murdock, a blind lawyer with a special sixth sense, fighting criminals in his red costume during the nights. You know how his father died, you know that he lives in Hell’s Kitchen and you know that the Kingpin is one of his biggest villains; these are pretty much constant factors to a Daredevil comics. However, what’s interesting is that during the 52 years long run of Daredevil many different writers and drawers have worked on the comics and each of them shaped the character a bit to their own style, giving him a unique voice. Frank Miller, Alex Maleev, John Romita, Joe Quesada — the list is veeeery long, and it’s full of different perspectives and surprising art styles varying from the “original” comic feel to the hand-painted, beautifully crafted drawings.
Since the birth of comic books, artists have experimented with many different art directions and approaches, pushing the boundaries of the classic panel structure. See the snippet below from The Sandman — Overture #5 as a perfect example:
It is clear that the image is from a comic book, but at the same time, it’s something entirely different than what we’re used to. Wonder how this ties to corporate communications and storytelling?
Just like comic books, companies have their own stories and principles as well. Details about the foundation, key messages and values or the biggest success stories are usually carved in stone, but the way you tell them is largely up to you and your creativity.
Similar to the artists of comic books, you are the one who has to make these stories and messages your own.
You have to interpret these based on your own thoughts and perspectives, and present them in a way that suits your style and personality without changing the original meaning. For example, I — as a proud Generation Z member and a digital native — love to think and express my thoughts visually. A little colour, playing around with some creative icons, pictures and layouts can enhance a “traditional” company intro slide and make it much more appealing (in no more than 5 minutes’ time), without changing the original message or going against the brand compliance rules. You don’t have to be a Photoshop expert or a creative genius to achieve that; you just have to keep your eyes open, collect new ideas and inspiration from every possible source and think about how you could implement these within your company’s framework and guidelines.
Comic books and their artists really excel at this, and thanks to my growing comic collection, I’m getting better and better at infusing this kind of storytelling approach and mentality to everything that I do. Whenever I’m composing an internal newsletter, designing a presentation, writing an article or preparing some new posters to the office, my aim is to recreate what I illustrated earlier with the Sandman excerpt: create something that is familiar and fresh at the same time and carries my unique voice and perspective.
Seriously, be open-minded, go and read some comic books, you’ll thank me for it later!
