A Better Marketing Experience for Comics Creators
Sweet is a tiny, bootstrapped startup building tools and applications for the comics industry. I began working with them in March, 2024, helping establish branding, product definition, and UX/UI design for the first in a suite (the Sweet Suite, get it?) of new tools for comics creators and publishers – Bindings.
Bindings lets a creator (or publisher) generate a unique shareable link to a preview of a comic book, web comic, or manga. Those links can be shared and posted anywhere, and can be configured with an array of customizable actions, including links to buy the comic online, Kickstarter and Patreon integrations, the ability to find local comic shops in your area, and more.
Adding and Editing Comic Previews
Creators begin by uploading comics (either as grouped images - JPG, PNG, TIFF, etc. - or PDFs, which are then converted and optimized for high-res display in the Bindings reader. Once a comic is added to a creator's library, they can add and edit metadata, set custom covers, edit and reorder individual pages, and more. Creators can also set reading direction for each entry (left-to-right for western comic books, right-to-left for manga, top-to-bottom for vertically scrolling web comics).
Customizing Share Links
The heart of the Bindings feature set is the ability to create customized share links that creators can post on social media, their own websites, or share via email or text. These links include a high-res preview of the comic (creators can set the number of pages available in the preview) in the Bindings reader, and are paired with one or more custom actions.
These actions include newsletter sign-ups, customized links to external sites or app, Patreon and Kickstarter integrations, and more. Each selected action is shown as a button on the bottom toolbar in the Bindings reader, and in a larger format on the "end cap" page at the end of the preview.
Analytics
Along with the core comic preview interface, we also built a lightweight Analytics dashboard for creators. They can easily see both individual and aggregate analytics for their shared previews, including total views, total clicks on actions, location data on where their fan base is located, and even referral data to tell them which platforms generate the most views.
Bindings Brand Identity
In addition to working closely with Sweet founder Kenny Meyers and developer Ben Carr on product definition for the initial Bindings release, I also led design for the Bindings brand identity. That work included custom logo design (inspired by both stitched and spiraling bindings of books), as well as defining the typography and color palette for the brand.
Extending the Brand to Marketing Materials
Once the basic visual identity for Bindings had been established, I also worked to develop an expanded visual design language for various marketing material, including OpenGraph image templates, standardized templates for social media posts and stories, and other assets.
Additional Notes
Curious to learn more about Bindings? Get the full rundown of features at Bindings.app. If you want to see Bindings in action, click here to read a short preview comic book in the app. You can also see it in action with a vertically scrolling version of the same preview comic, ideal for mobile reading.