Designing a creator-first web comic experience
How can we give web comic fans more immersive content and creators
more support and autonomy?
Glow is a web comic app that provides more financial support to web
comic artists and provides users more immersive experiences, such as
“chatting” with their favorite characters. Users can purchase
advance episodes of their favorite web comics through the app, see
sneak peeks of key artwork, and follow their friends and favorite
artists.
ROLE
Glow approached me to both build a strong, scalable, and friendly
brand for them and also create a robust design system that would
set them up for success. With the founding team, I worked to
create a comprehensive brand strategy that not only complemented
each stakeholders’ design aesthetic, but also felt on-target for
the users and the overall brand. I also created the high fidelity
designs for their mobile app and delivered all assets needed for a
successful new product launch.
This included:
- Setting the mood, tone, and design direction for Glow
-
Drafting brand values, brand attributes, and a working brand
manifesto
-
Designing the logo, sub marks, illustrations, and graphic
elements
- End-to-end mobile app product design
-
Building a robust, comprehensive UI component library of
interchangeable, organized components that the Glow team can
use to build future features
-
Designing social media templates, merch, and App Store
promotional images for Glow’s launch
RESULTS
The new brand and app was launched and live in July 2023
DURATION
January 2023 - June 2023
SKILLS
Strategy
Brand Identity
Visual Identity
Logo Design
Product Design
Design System Architecture
UX/UI Design
BRAND IDENTITY
Getting lost in your favorite worlds
Glow is for the most passionate web comic lovers. We’re talking about
the day dreamers, the storytellers, and the ones with their heads in
the clouds maybe just a little too much. Our visual design system
plays with this theme of immersive daydreaming from its bright pastel
colors to the smiling cloud logo. Hand-drawn illustrations add to the
fun, playful feeling of the brand.
LOGO DESIGN
Head in the clouds
The name Glow came from the “glow you get reading your favorite web
comic.” I wanted to play with this idea of getting lost in a new world
and daydreaming about your favorite characters with your head in the
clouds. Naturally, the idea of a cloud came to mind for the primary
logomark. For the wordmark, I wanted the letters to feel friendly and
blend together. I created a custom script with tweaked italicized
letters that connected to each other.
product DESIGN
From MVP to product launch
The Glow team had a rough MVP that they were testing with users, but
wanted a full end-to-end redesign. I began by focusing on the primary
screens and the primary elements of those screens — the product cards,
episode blades, and social network. Each product card has a slight
graphic drop shadow, reminiscent of the shape of a comic book page, to
both create a sense of visual hierarchy and give a whimsical look and
feel. For more complex flows, such as commenting or in-app payments, I
broke it down by state and designed all instances for each state so
that the Glow team would have every edge case accounted for. Once the
primary screens were created, everything was componetized and
organized into a custom Figma library. From colors to form fields to
responsive breakpoints, I set up Glow’s developer team for success.
I also designed a custom landing page that quickly explained the
unique benefits of Glow with strong a call to action to download the
app.
