Educational comics have been an area of interest for me for a while. I have been working on how to bring comics into my consultancy work with companies. The most successful so far was creating a guidebook for new employees. It was this work that actually inspired me to start my OCA degree, to see how I can bring storytelling into the workplace to help people learn, enjoy their work and share ideas.
I really enjoy the way that comics can also be used to tell historical tales in a way that amplifies the story as a vehicle to convey information. I enjoyed this comic that won an award in the World Illustration Awards. It was originally published in Italian; I really enjoy how visual storytelling allows for the internationalisation of educational information.
In Exercise 4.2 of Key Steps of Illustration I also noticed the Submarine Museum in Gosport had used comics to tell the story of a submarine in World War Two:
Looking at the items in the research task, I was pleased with the breadth of educational comics that have been used for a lot longer than I had expected. "Chick Tracts" itself was interesting in the way that it used illustrations to tell the story of Jack Chick, and I could see a meta version where a comic could be used in an article to tell biographical stories. The Tracts themselves were frankly quite bizarre. The tracts use a range of sequential illustrations to make their points, with a large variety in the balance between images and text.
I do think that comics can be used for a much wider variety of educational purposes. They seem to be relegated to mainly historical, biographical or religious uses if they want to utilise storytelling. If not, the sequential illustrations are then pigeon-holed into the real of diagrammatic illustrations like airline safety pamphlets.
I read the comic adaptation of Goldratt's "The Goal" [2] a few years ago and was struck by how efficiently the comic was able to convey the core information of the prose novel it was adapted from. I think there is still a distinct need to use comics to tell stories about how we work together, how we effect change and make a difference through our work. I think this is something I still want to explore. I wonder if the reason it has not been more successful is that comics do not naturally fit into the normal functions of an organisation. I would like to investigate more how I can blend all of my consultancy experiences with my emerging abilities to tell stories visually. I think then I would be able to try and tackle some of these 'business' problems in non-traditional ways.
References
Reugler, A., 2018. Postcard from South Dakota. [image] Available at: https://www.alexandraruegler.de/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/alexandraruegler_internazionale_comic_engl_72dpi.jpg [Accessed 16 June 2021].
Zimmerman, D., Goldratt, E., Motter, D. and Zimmerman, H., 2017. Eliyahu M. Goldratt's the goal. 1st ed.
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