designcomics.org

What It Is

Design Comics is a free website offering comic characters and scene assets for product design, website design, and storyboard creation. It includes characters such as Mary, AnaLi, Pravin, Joe, Miguel, and Galina, which can be used to build design stories, user scenarios, and product narratives. The site also includes full comic story examples and tips on “what makes a good story,” positioning it more as a UX/product design communication asset library than a general illustration platform.

Core Capabilities and Resources

Based on the main content, the resources include various character emotions, angles, and poses, as well as scenes such as phone conversations, character interactions, and locations outside the office. These are well suited for quickly assembling user journeys, requirement explanations, or storyboards for design reviews. Source files are available in JPEG, PNG, and Adobe Illustrator formats, with Open Document Presentation slide files also provided. The site specifically notes that the presentation format makes it easier for distributed teams to develop and share storyboards.

Licensing, Pricing, and Collaboration

In terms of pricing, the main content clearly states that the illustrations can be used for free, with no mention of subscriptions, paid downloads, or enterprise plans. For copyright, it requires attribution at the end of slides or storyboards; however, it does not go into detail on commercial use, redistribution, or the scope of permitted modifications, so these should still be checked carefully before formal commercial use. Collaboration support mainly comes from the open presentation files, which make team sharing easier, but the site does not provide modern collaboration features such as online editing, comments, or version management.

Pros and Cons

The main strengths are its focused theme and assets that directly support product design storyboarding. The combination of characters, scenes, and examples is fairly complete, reducing the initial effort needed to create design narratives. Its file formats are also relatively open, supporting both bitmap files and Illustrator source files. The drawbacks are that the main content does not disclose the size of the asset library, update frequency, or maintenance status. The recommended tools include StarOffice, OpenOffice, and NeoOffice, which suggests an older format ecosystem. The licensing terms are not very detailed, and there is also limited information about support.

Who It’s For and Access from China

Design Comics is suitable for UX designers, product managers, interaction designers, web design teams, and distributed teams that need to express user scenarios in comic form. The main content does not provide information about access from China, so this remains unknown. Since it is a free resource site, payment is not a major concern. If you need more modern online editing, team collaboration, or Chinese-language templates, alternatives such as Canva, Figma community templates, Storyboard That, Blush, and unDraw may be worth considering.