Lady DELUXE is a personal project of mine that is currently in intermittent development. It’s a horror slice-of-life comic revolving around 6 queer paranormal women whose lives collide while attending an LBT (lesbian, bi, and trans) support group in Busan, Korea.
Whenever I could, I took opportunities to go into depth with the direction and possible implementations of the project. This includes both a digital web and a print format. For this story, I’m aiming for a webcomic first, print later approach, to determine the audience and demand for the series by breaking down the initial paywall barrier, then opening up the possibility of a physical version to be purchased.
I’ve done a lot of experiments on the possible word mark for the series, but the direction for the current one is based on Reid Miles’s typographic style for the classic era of Blue Note Records, amongst other things. I wanted it to be simple, unassuming, but a bit rebellious, with the first and last syllables of the title flipped on their sides. The word mark needed to be compact in order to fit within the visual block system for the print trade dress as well work as the heading button in the potential website.
Each format had their own exclusive incentives, but they don’t take away from the main meat of the project: the comic. It felt right with the project’s themes and setting to make it a manga, down to being read from right-to-left instead of left-to-right, unlike other OEL manga. With print, I explored physical version of the book: a tankoubon volume, as well as a supplementary interview section, at the end of each volume of the book.
As for the webcomic site, I laid out and visualized what the site structure is and what features would
aid in the reading experience in a desktop version. It includes light and dark modes, a page viewer
with zoom and spread/single-page options, as well as a transcript for each page. Outside of the comic,
some additional content can be downloaded in character bios with respective profile pictures and
wallpapers.
Although I don’t care to reveal too much of the actual story, this is a project that I am fond of,
and I hope to share more when the time is right!
