I've been an avid user of MetaFilter, the 800-pound gorilla of collaborative weblogs, for years. So when the site's creator, Matt Haughey, announced the redesign contest in late November of 2004, I knew I had to enter.
It was a chance to give something back to the community that had provided me with so much information and entertainment over the years; it was an opportunity to try out my design chops on a really high-profile project. (And, let's face it, the lure of winning a free custom-painted iPod caught my attention, too.)
Here's my redesign of the site.
Click on the image for full-size
mockup
(launches in new window)
The contest results were announced on February 5, 2005.
My design wasn't the winner -- but Matt did mention my design was one of his favorites, which was extremely gratifying. He wrote:
"This is probably the strongest of the entries that used a three column design. Everything seems to have its perfect spot and I like the use of color that still mixes well onto a white page. I'm guessing the icons let you jump between sections, and I love the idea of surfacing the search engine onto the front page."
Shortly after announcing the contest results, Matt reworked the existing front page to include a search box. It was really cool to see at least one element of my redesign have an immediate effect on the site.
On the other hand -- it looks like I'm going to have to buy my own iPod.
The Merchants of Deva are a convention hospitality and entertainment group, providing local science fiction conventions with parties and dances and other events.
I designed this logo for them on spec, and they enthusiastically adopted it. The group is named for a fictional organization in a series of fantasy novels by Robert Asprin -- interdimensional traders who are often seen as trickster demons.
Their old logo had a set of horns; I tried a different approach to suggest that playful demonic aspect with the pointed tail on the "E". I wanted a logo that suggested something slightly exotic, bold, and above all, cool. Something that looked simultaneously very classic and very modern.
I designed the logo with an eye towards multiple uses -- something that would look equally good as a rubber stamp, or on a T-shirt, button, or banner.
This is another logo intended to be bold, clean, simple and iconic. This logo is for an old mailing list I used to be on, one for members of the Gothic scene in Seattle. Despite their tastes for morbid movies, dark music and black clothing, these were some of the nicest, well-educated, polite and well-spoken people I've ever met on the Internet.
It was suggested that we needed a logo for flyers, invitations and the like. I wanted something that would therefore be immediately recognizable, even from a distance.
In the end, I decided to combine the ancient Egyptian "Eye of Horus" symbol, a motif often used in the Gothic subculture, with the outline of Seattle's Space Needle.
Science fiction convention concept art
At one point, I was involved with a group of people who were interested
in starting a new science fiction convention in Seattle, one that focussed on
the "cyberpunk" genre. We got as far as having a hotel booked, a date set,
and some flyers distributed, but we didn't confirm the booking in time and
we lost our weekend and with it, our momentum. But I did create some
interesting designs for it, including the logo shown here.
Roleplaying game concept art
I was also involved in a group of people who were interested in
writing a series of role-playing games and selling the rulebooks online
as downloadable PDF files. It was an idea that was a little too ahead
of its time, although other people have had success with similar ventures
since. I did create a set of concept art to show potential investors
and developers that showed the range of games we might produce.
This first one (one of my earliest works in Photoshop, in fact) was for a game that would be set in a dream-world whose inhabitants were first starting to realize their world wasn't real -- and that that meant they could do anything.
Roleplaying game concept art
This game was going to be set in a distant future where
players would be part of the military of an star-spanning
empire where Earth ruled with an iron fist.
Roleplaying game concept art
Pantheon was going to be our super-powered,
comic book hero game, although with a lot more sophistication
and realism than usually accompanies the genre. The game
was largely going to deal with how people with super-powers
interacted with the world's other superpowers -- governments
and corporations.
Roleplaying game concept art
Lastly was the game idea that we kept coming back to --
a "steampunk" game, set in a high-tech version of Victorian
London, long before that genre had gained the popularity it
enjoys today. This was my first stab at a title and a logo
for it, inspired by the fact that the 19th century Latin motto
for "Victoria rules" shared an abbreviation with virtual reality,
an idea that was becoming popular when this game was first
being laid out. In the end, we thought the name just seemed
too obscure to go over well with our general audience.
Roleplaying game concept art
This was the next version of the game outlined above --
the name just popped into my head one day and I loved the
sound of it. The graphic I created here is stil, to this
day, one of my favorite designs I've ever made.
Font design
I wanted the materials we created for Forever London
to have a very distinctive, unique look, and that meant I wanted
to create our own typeface for titles and section headings.
I came up with a design that was a blend of elements from different
Victorian display fonts overlaid on top of each other, complemented
with interlocking gears. The end result had a very Jules Verne look
that I was quite happy with.
Preliminary sketch
I never did have a chance to use the font I created above for
anything, until early 2008 when I was asked to create the website
and logos for Steamcon,
a steampunk convention that's just starting up here in Seattle.
As of this writing, I don't even have even the beginnings of a
site up and running, but here's one of my first drafts of a
graphic for the site.
When I worked as Lead Developer for Blue Utopia, I built most of the core functionality of their flagship product -- a Customer Relation Management (CRM) web application to keep track of individuals and organizations, including contact information, personal and professional information, detailed call logs, event history, and contribution records.
The system was built using PHP and MySQL,
and made extensive use of Javascript to make
it easier for users and to ensure they
entered data in the correct
format.
My clients on this project wanted their entire website redone. I sat down and talked with them and found that they were fairly happy with the site's existing structure and color scheme, and that they really just wanted the site to look more professional.
Since their interior redesign work was very clean, elegant, and architectural, I wanted the look of their website to reflect those qualities. I laid out blocks of color and images in a consistent grid pattern across the various pages, varying the sizes of pictures to keep the user's interest, but still always aligned to that same basic grid.
I also upgraded their site to use modern CSS standards, and took the pictures they provided me and corrected them in Photoshop to be brighter, sharper, and more colorful than before. They were very happy with the results. (Unfortunately, the domain has since expired, so I can't link to them here.)
DemoRoom approached my former employers, Talking Dog Media, and asked, "Can you copy the look-and-feel of one of our CD-ROM projects in Flash, for an on-line demonstration?"
We told them of course we could -- and then I set out to see if I actually could do it!
It ended up being the biggest Flash project I've ever tackled. It wasn't easy, but it was a lot of fun, and I think it really succeeded.
Click the screenshot to your right and the
Demo will launch in a new window.
Talking Dog Media was where I first really spread my wings as a professional designer. Aside from the Flash demo mentioned above, I also coded tools to automate posting content to their online courses, created custom web-based discussion forums, and created a keyword-based search engine for existing graphics made in-house so that they could easily be found and repurposed for new projects.
Here are screenshots of just a few of the projects I worked on:
First is a proposal
for a redesign of the Talking Dog
Media site. I was placed in charge
of redesigning their website after
taking the initiative to research and
write a document
outlining principles of web design
for the company to follow.
Second is a design I
created for a website for a magazine
called The Scientist. I believe
the client eventually decided they
couldn't afford to launch a website at
that time, but they were extremely
happy with my initial
designs.
Finally is the
homepage for Sedgwick Ports. I
didn't come up with the visual design
for this site -- this was a design I
was handed by Talking Dog's art
department. Nevertheless, I'm still
very proud of this site because I did
something with this design I honestly
didn't think was possible -- I made it
work.
Michael Montoure was a graduate of the Early Entrance Program at the University of Washington, where he first started using the Internet back in 1987. His first web design work was for Linux Journal magazine, where he had been working as a customer service representative until he put together a set of web pages to convince them that he should be their new webmaster.
While working for Talking Dog Media, he built sites for City University, Eagle Hardware, and Valley Medical, among others. Later, he worked on the portal site for the iCEBOX, an Internet information appliance; worked as an HTML Developer for Classmates.com; and was lead developer for Blue Utopia, building online campaign management tools for political organizations.
Montoure is also a professional horror writer. His website Bloodletters is a showcase of his horror fiction and artwork. He also created the Seattle weblog portal, a weblog aggregator and map for Seattle-area bloggers.
He can be reached at .