The Global Manga Initiative
Promotional trailer I developed to showcase the creator-centered functionality of the Global Manga Initiative (visit site)
The Global Manga Initiative (GMI) is a social network for independent comic creators working within the Japanese 'manga' style. I founded GMI in 2011 as an entrepreneurial initiative dedicated to aiding these artists in finding success. GMI onboarded an Agile Software Development and ITO company to meet the technical needs of the network. Development ran 11 months, including public Beta testing, which helped us dynamically refine priority and scope.
I served as creative director, in charge of designing the functionality, aesthetics and UX of the site to meet the highly-varied needs of our audience while adhering to our budget and scope. This involved research interviews with hundreds of artists, designing functionality tailored to user needs, creating design documents to convey functionality to the team, and managing via Agile methodology to prioritize features and guide development.
Allowing Users to Customize their On-Site Presence
As a network for creators, it was essential that GMI allow its userbase to quickly and easily customize their profiles in the community. At the same time, we had to ensure to implement such customization without making the page visually overwhelming to visitors.
To mesh these two needs, users would be allowed to upload a custom icon and a background for their profiles, while the live-area of the page remained uniform with the rest of the site's presentation. This granted individual styling while retaining visual consistency.
Creating a Hub for Comic Series
Users made it clear that individual comic series would also require their own profiles. These pages needed to serve as 'one-stop-shops' for updates, provide a community for fans, and visually entice new readers, all while maintaining cohesion with the rest of the network.
Comic profiles allow for visual styling, posting to followers, custom linking, and automatically previewing newly released chapters. Genre tags attract new readers, who can jump to any chapter of the story, add the series to their feed, and support its creator(s).
Uploading Pages and Editing the Reading Sequence
Research showed that one of the largest pain points creators had with other networks was uploading their work. Standard 'one-at-a-time' image uploaders were too slow, and often did not account for reading formats in different cultures, or 2-page 'spread' images.
I designed a grid-based comic editor that allows the user to import entire folders of images in an instant. Drag-and-drop editing and sequence preserving functionality allows creators to easily customize their comic's presentation to match any format they prefer.
Following Series and Customizing the Reading Experience
GMI provides a vast anthology of ongoing comic series to explore. However, with every visitor having differing preferences regarding reading-habits and update notifications, it was crucial to allow the network's reading experience to be uniquely tailored to the user.
Each comic series is displayed in a dynamic bar that updates based on the user's progress through the story. Users can follow a series, receiving its updates in their feed and adding to their Reader Shelf; a visual inbox of newly released chapters the user can tailor into their own custom reading experience!