Mirko Ilić is an American graphic designer of Serbian and Croatian descent.
He 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.

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 ceased to exist and Ilić entirely stopped working on the comics, and focused 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. Soon started publishing his illustrations in Time, New York Times, 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).