Mirko Ilić

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Mirko Ilić (born 1 January 1956 in Bijeljina, SR Bosnia and Herzegovina, SFR Yugoslavia) is an American graphic designer of Serbian and Croatian descent.

Ilić was born in Bijeljina, and has finished the School of Applied Arts in Zagreb. He published his first works in 1973, and has since been publishing comics and illustrations in magazines, such as Omladinski tjednik, Lasta, Tina, Pitanja, and has become the art and comics editor of the students' magazine Polet in 1976. That's when he organized an informal organization of the comic book creators Novi kvadrat (The New Square), that has been widely connected to the Novi val musical movement in Zagreb. That connection also made Ilić design album covers of some of the most prominent Yugoslav bands of the time, such as Bijelo dugme, U škripcu, Prljavo kazalište, BOA, Parlament, and many others. He also wrote the song Čovjek za sutra on the first album of Prljavo kazalište, but he wasn't given the credits for the authorship. Ilić appears in Sretno dijete, Igor Mirković's documentary about the Novi val movement in Zagreb, as one of the most prominent figures of the movement.

In 1977, Ilić started publishing his works in the established comics magazines outside Yugoslavia, such as Alter Alter, Métal Hurlant and Heavy Metal. In 1980, Novi kvadrat seized to exist and Ilić entirely stops working on the comics, and focuses upon illustration and graphic design. In 1982, he started working for the Italian magazine Panorama, as well as for the Croatian magazine Danas. He stopped working for the magazines in 1985, and in March 1986 he left Yugoslavia and went to New York "with $1,500 in the pocket and no idea what to do upon getting there". Yet, he soon started publishing his illustrations in Time, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and many other prominent and influential newspapers and magazines. In 1991, he becomes an art director of Time International, and the following year he becomes art director of the op-eds in the New York Times.

In 1993, Ilić became one of the co-founders of Oko & Mano Inc. graphic design studio, and in 1995 he founded Mirko Ilić Corp., a graphic design and 3-D computer graphics and motion picture title studio. In 1998, he created the title sequence for the romantic comedy You've Got Mail.

He is a co-author of several books about graphic design: Genius Moves: 100 Icons of Graphic Design, Handwritten - expressive lettering in digital age, and Anatomy of design (all of them co-authored with Steven Heller) and Design of Dissent (with Milton Glaser).

Ilić was married to Croatian writer Slavenka Drakulić, and is currently married to Nicky Lindemann, with whom he has two children.