Michael Deal

Product designer, systems nerd, building new things in code

Designing end to end, strategy to pixels. Track record at the front of new product categories: dataviz → AR → creator platforms → web3. Shipping fast, obsessing over craft, and kicking soccer balls.

Experience

  1. SuperRare Labs

    Head of Product

    Aug 2024 – Dec 2025

    • Built Rare Protocol into its own product line with a small team (1 PM, 2 engineers). Sole designer — prototyped in code (thanks Claude). Owned strategy, design, and delivery.
    • Conceived + designed Rare Rewards — protocol features routing platform fees back to community members driving the network.
    • Designed Creator Staking — fans back the creators they believe in early and share in their success. Shipped before similar patterns appeared widely.
    • Built an AI-powered research pipeline — interview transcripts, support tickets, and social channels feeding a tagged database used across product and marketing.
    • Shipped a creator discovery app — live activity feed + game-like mechanics that reward spotting emerging artists early.
    • Wore every other hat required: financial modeling, vendor management, regulatory navigation, developer docs.
  1. Head of Design

    Feb 2021 – Aug 2024

    • First design hire at the platform that sparked the onchain art movement. Built the design department 0→1 — culture, process, systems — personally designing daily, while mentoring a team of 4.
    • Invented new art collecting formats and marketplace patterns that reoriented the platform around social.
    • Built a design system and brand toolkit that multiplied output — engineers prototyping without mockups, marketing shipping on-brand assets independently.
    • Iterated relentlessly on core flows — turned clunky blockchain friction into smooth UX that drove traffic and sales.
    • Helped steer the company through repeated pivots, using design to make options concrete.
  2. ConsenSys

    Lead Product Designer

    Nov 2018 – May 2020 · Remote

    • Product design, strategy, and creative direction for a skunkworks team building consumer apps onchain. End-to-end IC role: research, prototyping, marketing.
    • Designed and shipped TruSat — a citizen-science app crowdsourcing satellite tracking data from stargazers worldwide. Shaped the product across multiple iterations.
  3. VICE News

    Design Director

    Mar 2016 – Oct 2018 · Brooklyn, NY

    • Co-directed an award-winning team of art directors, data journalists, animators, and illustrators. Hands-on throughout — scripting, storyboarding, designing, and animating alongside the team.
    • Co-built a design system spanning TV and web that enabled teams to publish visual content daily and deliver 25 minutes of graphics-rich video to HBO every weeknight.
    • Designed vicenews.com. Supervised build and launch.
    • Art directed Verse Chorus Bridge — animating 30 musician interviews to visualize the layers of their songs.
  4. Splice

    Product Designer

    Dec 2014 – Feb 2016 · New York, NY

    • Led product and design for Splice Sounds from concept to launch. It found product-market fit and became a $100M+/yr business, used by millions of producers, still built around the core UX loop I shipped.
    • Shipped features across Splice's creator tools — hands-on in the codebase, building pages and components, iterating from usage data.
  5. Statlas

    Cofounder, Designer

    Apr 2014 – Oct 2014

    • Cofounded and launched a visual news platform for sports — real-time infographic updates pairing game data with crowdsourced and auto-generated annotations.
    • Presented product at Y Combinator, advanced to final interviews.
  6. Google Creative Lab

    Designer

    Nov 2011 – Nov 2012 · New York, NY

    • Designed new product concepts for Google's ecosystem — including voice and AR-based search solutions and a global sign-in experience.
    • Initiated pitches for Chrome campaigns, including a sonic identity system for Chromebooks. Co-designed Project Loon's brand identity.
  7. Local Projects

    Interactive Designer

    Mar 2011 – Nov 2011 · New York, NY

    • Designed multi-sensory experiences for physical spaces — game design, AR, motion capture, touchscreen walls, projection mapping.
    • Developed award-winning experiences for Cleveland Museum of Art, and pitch-winning concepts for Smithsonian's NMAAHC.
  8. Pentagram

    Graphic Designer

    Jan 2010 – Mar 2011 · New York, NY

    • Distilled complex datasets into simple architecture and UX for brands and cultural institutions.
    • Illustrated visuals for GE's household energy calculator, now in the MoMA design collection.

Teaching

  1. School of Visual Arts

    Adjunct Professor

    Sep 2017 – May 2018 · New York, NY

    Developed and taught a two-semester product design course — workshops, assignments, lectures, guest speakers, portfolio reviews, career mentoring.

Education

  1. General Assembly

    Web Development Immersive

    Nov 2013 – Jan 2014

    Full-time immersive in full-stack web development — building and shipping apps end to end: Ruby, Python, JavaScript, HTML/CSS, SQL, Git, and the era's standard MVC frameworks. Where building in code first took hold.

  1. Boston University, College of Fine Arts

    Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA), Graphic Design

    2005 – 2009

    Two years of painting and drawing fundamentals before specializing in graphic design — craft carried into every medium since, with the conviction that form is itself a function.

Recognition

Press for personal projects

In print:

  • (2x) National Geographic
  • New York Times
  • Newsweek
  • HOW Magazine
  • PRINT Magazine

Digital:

  • The Guardian
  • The Smithsonian
  • Fast Company
  • Brainpickings
  • Mental Floss
  • Gawker

Exhibited

Professional:

  • Museum of Modern Art, Talk to Me (Project for Lisa Strausfeld, 2010)

Personal:

  • Espacio Fundación Telefónica, Madrid
  • Aquarium Tropical, Paris
  • Palma Aquarium, Mallorca
  • Seattle Aquarium
  • Biomimicry 3.8, Dubai

Books

Personal projects:

  • Understanding the World (Taschen)
  • Ocean (Thames & Hudson)
  • Atlas of Knowledge (MIT Press)
  • Whale Music (Rothenberg)
  • Visualisation: A Handbook for Data-Driven Design (Kirk)

Professional case studies:

  • Designing Brand Identity (3rd–6th editions)
  • Data Visualization: Convey, Clarify, Construct (Do/Work)
  • Data Visualization: A Successful Design Process (Kirk)

Film and TV

Awards

  • (3x) Society for News Design 39 (2017)
  • Society for News Design 38 (2016)
  • Motion Awards: News Graphics (2016)
  • Type Directors Club Certificate of Typographic Excellence (2012)
  • Selected for Print Magazine's Regional Design Annual (2012)
  • HOW Magazine Best Logotype (2011)
  • Type Directors Club Certificate of Excellence (2011)
  • AIGA 365: Design Effectiveness (2011)

Speaking

Conferences:

  • NY Creative Tech Week (2016)
  • Sci Viz Conference (2016)

Schools:

  • Icahn School of Medicine (2016)
  • Maryland Institute College of Art (2016)