Hi, I'm Max.

A few UI details from a content publishing experience. Mostly minimal with a few areas of visual depth.

Small easter egg - the checkmark icon is the same symbol I created for the "Check Smile" UserEvidence logo. Little things really do make an experience special.

Working on revising these duotone dark mode icons.

I'm liking how they're looking. 16px grid with 2px stroke. Chunky and friendly.

A few iterations of Home Plate Deals wordmark.

A collection of some recent dark mode designs 🌑

When working on upgrade modal designs for copy.ai, I explored versions that included customer testimonials.

The testimonial needed to capture user attention while still only being a supporting element, as cost and seat selection were the most important details.

They're often low stakes, undervalued, and nearly forgotten. And I still love designing settings screens.

In revisiting a location-based social network iOS app to create the dark mode UI, I decided to keep the settings structure minimal, allowing the custom icons to have more visual impact.

One of the early iterations of copy.ai Workflows

I loved working on the dark mode version of a workspace selector for Speakeasy.

Happy Mother's Day 🩷

I redesigned social media platform logos as a way to present consistent, proportioned, and unique usage on my personal site.

For Dribbble's logo redesign, I created a version of the iconic basketball that hides a subtle "D" letterform.

When redrawing the Claude logo, I created a few iterations. These are a few of the more symmetric concepts.

I still prefer the asymmetric final version, as some of these concepts were too similar to other logos, and none of them properly conveyed the abstract flower concept.

Simple yet powerful. Position cards for Drift.

Swipe to quickly access ability to close position.

I had a great time working with Grammarly to redesign portions of an internal tool. So many small tweaks and iterations led to the final version. It was a complete group effort with plenty of team feedback implemented to make it as useful as possible.

And it looks good in dark and light modes.

The Subtle UI table looks pretty good in dark mode, too.

Every app has a collection of design iterations that didn't make the final cut.

I helped redesign sections of Saks Fifth Avenue's iOS app and, in the process, created a number of iterations of a product showcase section.

Aspects of these designs are live in the app today.

May the 4th be with you.

I’m finally taking more deliberate time to revisit Subtle UI. Here’s how the table component is coming along.

Every aspect is made in light and dark modes. I’m a dark mode user but this light mode table is one of my favorite parts of the library. It still needs more depth but it’s taking shape.

Apple Notes should have sticky table headers.

April was pretty great.

May this month be even better.

The X account drawer is... not awesome.

I'd like to avoid the drawer altogether with a long press to switch between accounts.

When the drawer is needed, a few small tweaks would make it more obvious which account you've selected, instead of using the same UI as the notifications indicator.

Threads' logo is lackluster. I understand the continuous line is supposed to represent a thread of text, but the execution is uninspired. If it pioneered using the @ symbol to tag a person/business, it would make sense, but it didn't so it doesn't.

As such, I redesigned the logo, blending the 🧵 emoji and "T".

Showing all UserEvidence assets without confusing users or removing critical information was a challenge.

I set a consistent height for cards, vertically-justified content, and hid actions by default. This made different chart types, variable length testimonials, and case studies easier to parse.

Settings are often neglected; an after-thought of product design.

I made custom icons, employed ample whitespace, and distinctly separated sections in Contentstack's settings experience.

Upgrading the typical wall of bland forms with clear options made it easy for users to tailor their preferences.

While at UserEvidence, the founders and I explored the idea of creating a sub-brand called B2B Research Lab, which would showcase customer insights.

I created a few different logo and wordmark concepts for the company. The aim was to match the bold UserEvidence style, while creating a distinct voice.

Design. Refine. Align. Repeat.

Packing details into Home Plate Deals’ wordmark.

No rounded corners. No gradients. No problem.

I wish Apple Notes tables had sticky columns.

Managing SaaS user seats should be easy and clear.

Make it obvious which team members are free and which are paid.

Tuesday typography tinkering

In addition to movie search and details concepts, I've re-imagined X's search dropdown experience.

Despite Sinners' #1 spot at the US box office this weekend, X fails to assign it any relevancy.

My experience places relevant results first and highlights featured media.

Challenged myself to draw a bunny in 30 minutes. No reference images, AI, tracing, etc.

Happy Easter, everyone 🐰

For the TRX virtual trainer app, I mocked up a series of mid-fidelity wireframes to demonstrate how the experience might appear for different class sizes.

I designed the trainer video as an image with translucency to show how much of the other content (if any) the video would occupy.

"What are you creating today?"

Made before ChatGPT was introduced, this was a simpler, friendlier front-end to AI experiences I designed while at copy.ai. I'm biased, but I think it holds up pretty well 2.5 years later.

The inspiration section offered one-click solutions to begin creating content.

Some of the most rewarding design work is the kind you don't notice until you zoom all the way in.

A few years back, I created a concept of how Workflows would enable copy.ai users to chain together a variety of tasks. Had a lot of fun creating the UI and enhancing it with subtle details.

In re-designing Contentstack's CMS search experience, an area sorely needing improvement was context of results.

Users could have thousands of results for a query. Sometimes the query appeared in the result's title, other times in a folder or tag.

My solution? Literally highlighting the context.

78 years ago, on April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson made his regular season major league debut for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

He became the first Black major league player since 1884, and paved the way for diversity in MLB and other leagues.

Happy Jackie Robinson Day ❤️ 💙

Designing for mobile can feel like solving a 400-piece puzzle on a nightstand; only some content will fit the allotted space, so you better make sure it's the most relevant.

A few years back, I designed and co-developed this mobile trading experience. Prices are higher today. Knock on wood 😬

I was adjusting the stroke width of a component-based pattern I'm creating in Figma for Home Plate Deals and ran into this fun effect.

Hypnotizing. Especially with the recording reversed and looped.

Updating case study header images to better highlight the key experience and/or features of the work.

First up, Preview SMS.

Working on refining a wordmark.

I'd describe the style as a blend of retro-future, block-letter, grayscale, and low-fidelity gradients.

Same hue, same saturation (both of 0), only lightness value changes.

A few years back, I designed several share modals for UserEvidence.

This modal allows users to preview the available themes for the selected data visualization (referred to as "Content Assets"), as well as select the file type.

It’s easy for an interface to become a chaotic rainbow when displaying multiple color palettes.

To combat this on Home Plate Deals, I’m de-emphasizing full-color presentation of team palettes until a user interacts with the team cards.

Work is still in progress but it’s feeling nice.

It only took over a dozen years to add client logos to my site.

For logos I didn't already have in SVG format, I image traced bitmap versions into vectors. I then optically aligned all logos, grouping based on general symbol themes (circular, outline, letterforms, etc.)

Side navbar details are coming together for Subtle UI.

Dark and light modes are getting equal attention.

For the initial version of Daily Posts, I used a very basic HTML structure of <li>'s inside of <ul> with a few <span> and <div>'s.

I recently updated the structure to accurately reflect the content using <article> with <header> and <footer> as well as <time> and <figure>.

It's great when passion aligns with purpose. Several years ago, I did a bit of design work for a nonprofit organization.

Of that work, I'm particularly proud of this logo redesign. I kept the core concept the same as the original but redrew and repositioned the elements to be more balanced.

Closeup of cards in an API Dashboard.

Hope everyone has a great weekend ❤️.

Updating the way I present company logos on Home Plate Deals.

A little depth goes a long way.

Initial versions of a UI can be sparse and final versions garish. This work falls somewhere in between.

From the archives, here's an early, more minimal version of a medical dashboard. Not too bad, but doesn't have enough detail either.

Sharing the process can be as helpful as the end results.

I've been steadily updating Home Plate Deals. The MLB regular season is the prescribed timeframe and a daily rhythm of visitors has me striving to upgrade the "good" to "great".

My latest focus has been refining the wordmark. Bold lines are contrasted by subdued details to create a nice balance.

Here are some of my favorite designs from this past month. Onward to April 🙌

In updating my personal site, I've created "Daily Posts". Version 1 is a feed where posts contain:

- Image/Video
- Title
- Date/Time
- Caption
- Social platform links where the content was also shared
- Optional: relevant blog post/Figma Community links.

Next, I'll add gallery features to the post media.

The best loading state is no loading state.

But, since users will usually have to wait for some data to load, at least I can give them a fun animation to help pass the time.

Crafted by hand using SVG and CSS keyframes for Home Plate Deals.

Dark mode dashboard details from a recent project.

Working on a series of devices for an upcoming Figma Community file.

Screen content and bezels are made using a single frame. The devices are created using vectors instead of bitmap images, which means you can export UI mockups at any resolution, and still maintain details.

Here's how the cards are coming along for this year's UI refresh.

On hover, lots of little changes occur: pseudo-elements, scaling logos, changing saturation level, shifting opacity, rotating background gradient angles, and more.

Deals shown are from 2024. Not all 2025 deals have been publicized.

Upgrade modals don't have to be boring. In fact, they should be visually enticing.

If you're asking users for money, at least give them a nice experience while doing so.

I'm biased, but I believe the Preview SMS upgrade modal does just that.

Several instances of subtle depth + warm gradients = happy eyeballs.

For the final installment in my GitHub contributions concept series, I designed a year vs year view.

Maybe I’m just slinging more code these days, but I’d really like to easily visualize how my years stack up.

P.S. Figma outline view has me feeling like I’m designing Scantron sheets.

Goal: I'd like to embed content from X within posts on my personal site.

Problem: If I use X's embed code, it'll track users on my site, force its formatting, and can be changed/deleted anytime without my knowledge or permission.

Solution: I'll just code my own post container.

See the Live Version

Sometimes, you just need a nice table. From the archives, here's one of the many tables I designed for UserEvidence a few years back.

Data-heavy experiences don't have to feel like a slog.

Mitigate text volume by decreasing visual weight, only emphasizing the absolutely most important items.

Happy Friday!

I added an iOS example to Stacky - a free Figma Community file that demonstrates how you can create stacked, sticky headers in Figma.

Get the Figma File

Here's the grid spacing I used to create copy.ai's updated navigation bar component a few years back.

The collapsed state (shown on the left side of the image) keeps icon labels persistent to improve UX.

The expanded state (right side) has a popover menu, activated by clicking on the user's current Workspace, to quickly switch between Workspaces, create a new Workspace, access User Profile, access Experiments, or log out.

All icons were drawn on a 16px grid, custom made by yours truly.

I wrote about how the pink basketball site has become yet another walled garden.

2,000+ words. Many of them spelled correctly.

Read the Blog Post

Woke up at 3am PT today to watch the Dodgers vs Cubs MLB 2025 season opening day game, which took place at the Tokyo Dome in Japan. The Dodgers went on to win 4-1 over the Cubs.

While watching, I drew this illustration, using Home Plate Deals diamond grid.

Happy Opening Day to those who celebrate 🎊.

Hope you have an enjoyable holiday!

Stay safe and wear green 🍀.

If you take screenshots on an iOS device and work with those screenshots in Figma, you're likely losing the Display P3 color profile and original screenshot image quality along the way.

Here are the steps I take to ensure that the final exported image retains all of the high quality aspects of the screenshot(s) used.

Read the Blog Post

Adding a subtle background pattern to the header and shadows to the wordmark for the 2025 MLB season refresh of Home Plate Deals.

Live in less than 2 weeks 🚀

In the meantime, see the countdown.

The process behind the Preview SMS logo.

Dialing in the details for the upcoming launch of the Home Plate Deals iOS app.

Having fun with scaleEffect and horizontal offsets on scroll in SwiftUI.

P.S. The deals shown here are from the 2024 season. Still compiling the 2025 MLB season deals.

Mocked the GitHub contributions comparison concept as an iOS widget as well.

A little depth goes a long way.

I recently created a free Figma Community file to help you add offset sticky headers your UI work. The project deserved a better name, so I gave it one: Stacky.

And, then, I created an app icon cover for the project.

Check out the file and let me know any feedback you have!

I absolutely love Internet Archive. It's one of the most important online resources and keeps the timeline of the web intact.

I redesigned its logo and wordmark with a refined grid and better overall balance, especially when viewed at smaller sizes.

For this redesign, it was important to keep the spirit of the original logo but update the depiction.

I redrew the logo with more consistency and weight. Subtle negative space creates the shadow from the building cast down on the columns.

For the wordmark, I used the typeface "Young Serif" by Bastien Sozeau.

Made these chunky icons for a project a few years back but never got around to sharing them.

Here are a few blog post illustration drafts that didn't make the final cut.

Love stacking blend modes and blurs in Figma 💚.

Read the Blog Post

Claude is really good - by far the AI tool I use most frequently. Anthropic has been crushing it.

The Claude logo, however, leaves a bit to be desired. I decided to make a quick redesign.

Here's my thought process behind this exercise.

I appreciate the hand-drawn aesthetic of the Claude brand within Anthropic's ecosystem, but the Claude logo just seems sloppy. I understand the "no rounded corners" design, and it seems like it is trying to represent neural pathways.

In GitHub, I'd love to be able to compare contributions between years based on the current day.

Also, it'd be cool to see how many days I've consistently contributed code, similar to how Duolingo, Reddit, Apple Fitness, and others surface these streaks.

Stats in concept are real (contributions might be higher by the time you see this) 😃

Coming soon...

Created a version of the Home Plate Deals logo using the custom grid I made for the 2025 MLB season countdown.

#MadeWithSketch

Wrote a few words on what "quality" means to me.

The topic for this post is inspired by a question that Karri Saarinen posed on X a few days ago. Karri's CEO of Linear - an app that demonstrates "quality" as I define it.

Read the Blog Post

Sunday swirls for an upcoming blog post hero illustration

Was a fun February in Figma.

The March continues 🌼 ☘️