Pablo Defendini: Position Paper

I’m a full-stack web designer (from visual design to front end code) who has been working in the space between publishing and technology for more than decade, at Macmillan, O’Reilly, and a few startups. One of my personal projects over the last seven or eight years has been applying web development tools and techniques to the comics making project.

Digital comics generally look to the static page as a framework for designing, laying out, displaying, and reading comics on a screen. Applying common web design and development techniques to how we make and display comics on screens can dramatically improve the reading experience, and also decrease complexity when trying to deliver a comic across a wide gamut of devices, platforms, and network conditions.

Naturally, building comics with HTML, CSS, and SVG, while using responsive design techniques, will also affect the way comics creators design their stories. Keeping these technical capabilities in mind can open up storytelling possibilities that wouldn’t be possible using a static page paradigm.

My work in this are is gathered at digitalcomics.co, and I’ve presented on this topic at Books in Browsers (2012), the Ebookcraft conference (2014), and The Comic Electric Symposium (2015).

I’m interested in participating in this workshop, since it seems directly relevant to my interests in this area, and I believe I have lots to offer the working group.

Thanks for your time,

Pablo Defendini