Mirko Ilic

Mirko Ilic is an American graphic designer of Serbian and Croatian descent. Born in Bijeljina, he studied Applied Arts in Zagreb and published his first comics in publications like Omladinski tjednik, Lasta, Tina and Pitanja from 1973. He was also art and comics editor of the students' magazine Polet. He formed the Novi Kvadrat artist group together with Milan Trenc, Radovan Devlic and Igor Kordej. Ilic illustrated silent comic one-pagers, and designed album covers for prominent Yugoslav bands.

By 1977 his work gained foreign popularity through publications in Alter Alter, Métal Hurlant, Heavy Metal and Epic Illustrated. When Novi Kvadrat stopped in 1980, Ilic left the comics field alltogether and focused on illustration and graphic design. He has worked for the Italian Panorama, and for the Croatian magazine Danas. He settled in New York in 1986 where he made illustrations for Time, New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, among others. In 1991 he became an art director for Time International. In 1993, Ilic was one of the founders of Oko & Mano Inc. graphic design studio, and in 1995 he founded Mirko Ilic Corp., a graphic design and 3-D computer graphics and motion picture title studio. He is a co-author of several books about graphic design.