The MakingComics.com project is aimed promoting comic arts and graphic storytelling to a worldwide audience through the use of free and comprehensive learning materials.  PYD Studio conceived of a crowd-sourced digital repository for comic-making educational material that could inspire comic makers new to the industry to learn how to develop their projects and share them with the world. MakingComics.com reimagines how to organize the wealth of information available on the Internet to be in service of accessible, inclusive education for all.

The MakingComics.com project was developed in collaboration with a team of volunteers. With the variety of interests and passions the team brought to the project, MakingComics.com was able to generate a virtual library of resources, original content, a podcast, and a virtual community for creators. As a volunteer organization, MakingComics.com has also worked with community partners to create learning opportunities both locally and virtually.

Taking inspiration from Wikipedia and the Internet Archive, PYD Studio developed MakingComics.com, aiming to cultivate a digital learning space that assembled, catalogued, and presented learning resources related to art literacy and comic creation.

The content quickly expanded on the web site, and PYD Studio strove to create a user interface with a minimalistic design using keywords and icons that support learners to navigate through the different resources with ease. The top navigation bar provides clear direction for interacting with different learning resources, such as an online course for beginners, resources for educators, and a podcast featuring interviews with professional makers.  

The organization of MakingComics.com strives to archive digital resources for learning, much like a digital library for makers. As opposed to physical libraries can only reach local users and are spatially limited, a digital repository has endless reach and worldwide accessibility. Every year since its development, MakingComics.com has been visited by over 1 million users, and the online course that it developed in partnership with High Tech High and Coursera has had over 65,000 users.

MakingComics.com is a project operated by volunteers dedicated to teaching the world how to make comics. The project exemplifies the belief that art literacy is a basic human right and our work is aimed at making scalable changes in the universal access to comic-making knowledge.