Comics for Grant Applications
SEE Part I of Grant Resources Series: Mobilize Knowledge with Comics
Can a comic enhance your grant application?
This is the question we set out to answer when we collaborated with Shana Gadarian and her team to create a two page comic for their recent NSF grant. The purpose of the comic is to provide an engaging visual that shows the relationship and interconnectivity between their separate intended research components in their project dealing with public and media attitudes and responses towards public health policy, and predicting and modeling pandemic preparedness. Their research efforts will come together to form the Social Political Intelligence for Disease Outbreak Research (SPIDOR). The comic visualizes both their research efforts, and intended data collection, as well as the intended outputs of SPIDOR.
The comic gives grant readers a succinct summary of the SPIDOR project accompanied with visuals that communicate the actions the research team will execute. It is more than a visual aid. It transports the grant readers into the near future where the SPIDOR team is actively engaging in and executing their research endeavors and outputs. It sets the stage not only for the rest of the grant application but also sets the stage for the SPIDOR team fulfilling their research goals.
This was an enjoyable comic to write as it was my first venture into creating a non-linear comic, and, in this case, a comic that allows the reader to enter into the narrative at any point on the page. It was a very exciting creative challenge, and it shows the variety of storytelling possibilities comics offer in communicating high level research.
It was also a thrill to work with SP Comics artist and creative director Darick Ritter, whose thoughtful art on the pages of this comic help transport the reader into the scenes in which the SPIDOR team will be preforming, analyzing, and releasing their research. And the color art by Mark Pate is simply stunning!
The SPIDOR comic adds to the growing variety of ways researchers, businesses, and non-profits use our comics, and it also adds to the variety of the types of comics we are able to create!
