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Audrey Valbuena

Developing the Post’s first bilingual graphic novel

Designed and developed the Post’s first bilingual, mobile-first graphic novel to reach new and younger audiences.


Role
UX Designer and developer Timeline
March - August 2023 Live product
Searching for Maura 

The story on mobile; the story translated into Filipino.

Project Brief

In March of 2023, I was approached by a designer and the comics editor of the Post about an idea they had to build out an accessible, mobile-first graphic novel. I was brought on to the project to build out its digital presentation. The graphic novel would be part of a larger series called The Collection.

The Post’s primary goal with this particular story was to reach a new, younger audience. The design team’s goal was to prove out the value of the graphic novel as a format for telling long-form, investigative stories, and something the newsroom could leverage more often as they differentiated their coverage for a younger target audience.

There were two primary challenges for this project:
  • Build out the piece so it was mobile-first and accessible, and could also be adapted to print and social using the same illustration panels
  • Build support around the newsroom for the resources to build out this project as we envisioned it
The first story in the series that would eventually publish “Searching for Maura”



Context and competitive analysis

To start the project, I did a deep dive into The Post’s history with graphic novels, beginning with static Instagram comics that came from The Lily, all the way to The Mueller Report Illustrated, which was one of the biggest resourced projects from the Post in recent years. I also looked at how other organizations were approaching illustrated  reporting to understand how they were structuring and developing their pages. 

The biggest things I noticed were a lack of responsive design, and inaccessible text baked into the illustrations. Some examples of the Post’s long legacy of comics journalism



Design process

I worked with the two other designers on the project to build out a structure for the piece. We mocked up how we would build the piece for mobile, setting up vertical panel dimensions, soft animations and working with the illustrator to deliver everything in layers so we could make the panels responsive across screen sizes. 

We split each panel into a series of illustrations and text blocks, so screen readers could navigate through the text and alt-text easily. 

We also pushed for the translation of the piece, so that it would be accessible to the communities Maura would have come from.  Early panel annotations of everything that needed to be a separate element for greatest accessibility






Final designs


Searching for Maura went live in both English and Filipino in August 2023. It features soft animations while you scroll, and includes alt-text in both the English and Filipino version.




Outcomes


The initial metrics for the page blew us away - readers were spending upwards of 2 minutes on the page, and more than half made it to the end of the story.

Another large success we had was in reaching an international audience: outside of the U.S., the Philippines had the highest portion of readers, which was the first time this had happened in Post history.

This story had immediate impact in the journalism world. The work put into it was honored with:
  • a Pulitzer Finalist notice, in the Illustrated Commentary category
  • Gold, Silver and Bronze medals by the Society of News Design

But my favorite way it was featured was on ANC 24/7 in the Philippines, where Karen Davila asks about the translation button and interacts with it live on air. 

I also learned a lot about producing accessible illustrated reporting through this process. I helped to begin a guide to inclusive and accessible alt-text and development alongside our comics editor afterward.  

Karen Davila showing “Searching for Maura” live on air! 




This site is always a work in progress. It was last updated February 2025.

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