Artful Comics
Comic Anthology
Artful Comics is a bi-annual comic anthology that curates the work of illustrators, artists and comic authors.
I wanted to take something simple, adapting ideas from various other mobile sites, which resulted in a simple layout, intuitive controls and info architecture that allows for sharing across platforms.
Comic Anthology
Artful Comics is a bi-annual comic anthology that curates the work of illustrators, artists and comic authors.
From 2010-2012 I served as Art Director for the publication. In establishing a clean, minimalist aesthetic for the book I hoped to keep the focus solely on the art and the stories it told.
In 2011 that same concept transferred to a redesign of the website and a conceptualization of a mobile web-based application that allowed users to read current and previous issues of the anthology.
After exploring way-finding from a theorical & practical standpoint, it became clear that aesthetic beauty & creative bonus features fall short in place of simple solutions that work across all platforms, on the web and on mobile, and organize information so that it adapts to the lifestyle of users.
I wanted to take something simple, adapting ideas from various other mobile sites, which resulted in a simple layout, intuitive controls and info architecture that allows for sharing across platforms.
Mobile Site Design
Menu: Menu navigation is always at the bottom of the screen -- no matter what you are in the mobile platform, scrolling down with one thumb will give you the 5 basic navigation options in large rectangular buttons. A ‘return to top’ arrow at the bottom makes returning to content at the top of the page as easy as one click.
Social: Social media buttons, like the menu, are always ready at a single swipe. Since only one JPG is ever on the screen at a time, each one acts as an independent information object that can be shared across twitter, facebook or email. To reach social media links, just pull the screen down at any point.
Swipe: Instead of scrolling downwards, the pages of the comic anthology each act as single-image pages that you swipe left like a thumb-able version of paper pages.
Tap: Tapping any image at any point will fade out the screen to give you the Title, Illustrator and Writer information. Tapping it again will return to your screen.
Shapes: Everything in the mobile site is either left-right or up-down, boxed off into rectanges for maximum usability and minimum excess.
