Image & word-Brian Fies

Last Tuesday, we had a special guest speaker, Brian Fies, in Design 1 class. Brian Fies is a late booming graphic novelist who has published two graphic novels: Mom’s Cancer and Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow? Throughout his lecture, he talked about the reason that he made his two graphic novels, about the design process when making comic books, and about the importance of words and images come together it will produce a good connection to audience.
During his lecture, Fies first talked about his first graphic novel, Mom’s Cancer, published in 2006. It is a graphic novel that depicts how Fies’ mom’s fight against lung cancer, and how his family reacts to his mother’s illness. For this comic, Fies is telling a real story to others from his personal experience. Moreover, Fies talked about a very important topic that words and image combined together produces good communication. To explain this statement, Fies made an analogy comparing rock music and comic . Comics are a combination of words and pictures in a way of rock music is a combination of music and lyrics. Fies also stated that “The music is just repetitive, and the lyrics of rock music are just bad poetry. However, if these two put together, it all of a sudden became a song that define an era.” In here, Brian is trying to tell us that both images and words are essential to each other especially in comic strip. Fies’s goal pose in comic is that “Neither words and images has meaning without the other. It fully tells a story if two of them come together.”

In his lecture, he used one of the pages in Mom’s Cancer to illustrate that words and images are both important in comic strip. The page shows that his mom was literally drawing in medical jargon. It simply tries to say his mother was overwhelmed with all the new information. It is a really good example to show the importance of combining words and images together, because the message will not convey effectively with only his mom’s image but without all the medical jargon written in the background. From this illustration, it has changed my perspective toward comic books that images cannot perfectly communicate without words.
The illustration below is another good example on how words and images works together and the time space relationship of comics. It is a scene that Fies’ mother was getting an illness. By looking at the pictures, we can tell his mother is getting bold and sick; however, if we see the words together with the picture, we can understand that it has a further meaning, which Fies’ mother is debating her responsibility for her illness.

                            

After listening to Fies’s lecture, I believe there is a strong relationship between words and images. Images are important because it allow readers to imagine; however, words are more essential because it helps audience to fully understand a story.

Image source: http://www.helenjaques.co.uk/blog/2010/comic-books-medicine-patient-education/)