Changelog

This site is a working product, so it keeps release notes: every meaningful push, what changed, and why. I build it in the open with an AI pair; the taste and the final calls are mine.

Content

Added Schematic, retired Wayfind, linked ARND live

New case study: Schematic, a 2016 design-research project on the 18 maladaptive schemas from schema therapy, rebuilt in 2026 as a navigable archive with a private browser-only self-check. ARND now links to its live alpha, and Wayfind came off the shelf. Mooze, Vesta Press, and Toronto Yuwol keep their live links.

WhySchematic is real design research, not a weekend build, so it earns a place. And the work should show what's live and current, not what's stale.

DesignEngineering

An accessibility and legibility pass

Audited contrast, motion, and reading comfort. The paper grain moved behind all content so it textures the page without ever sitting on top of the words. Reduced motion is now honored everywhere: framer-motion animations disable for anyone who asks (one setting at the root), plus a CSS reset for transitions and smooth scroll. The ambient dual-clock in the header is hidden from screen readers, since it is decoration, not information.

WhyThe audit found the fundamentals already sound (every text color passes AA, the reading measure is a comfortable 68 characters), so this was about the edges: texture that respects the text, and motion that respects the person.

Content

Varied the closing line on three case studies

Orchid, Aplos x Keela, and Forkable all ended on the same construction: 'the thing I'm proudest of isn't X, it's Y.' Once a reader notices a template, it stops reading as reflection. Rewrote each closer to land the same real point in its own words.

WhyRepetition across strong case studies reads as formula, and it undercuts writing that's otherwise specific and earned.

Content

Rewrote the experiments as design stories

Mooze, Vesta Press, Wayfind, and Color Analysis read like feature lists with a tech stack attached, which for a design portfolio quietly says 'I prompted an AI to build this.' Rewrote each to lead with one real decision: Mooze designs for the return not the save, Vesta refuses to summarize, Wayfind is built for one hand on one trip, Color Analysis is tactile instead of a verdict. Cut the feature bullets and the stack sections; the tools already sit in each case study's meta.

WhyA side project should still show taste and judgment. The point of these was never the stack, it was the call I made and why.

ContentEngineering

The side projects go live, for real

The Claude-built experiments that are actually deployed now carry a 'Visit the live app' link on their case study, so you can open the real thing instead of only reading about it: Mooze, Vesta Press, Toronto Yuwol, and Wayfind. Only verified-and-public deployments got linked.

WhyA case study says I built it; a live link lets you use it. For self-shipped software, the proof is that it runs.

Design

The vault steps out of the nav

Same-day edit: Vault left the header nav and now lives in the home page's right rail, under Now, where the wandering begins anyway. Also cut the repetition that had crept in: the vault feed no longer mirrors now-snapshots, and the hero links dropped About and Resume, which the fixed header already offers a glance away.

WhyThe header is for the hiring path; the vault is for wanderers. And saying something twice on one screen is not emphasis, it is noise.

DesignContentEngineering

The vault opens

New direction made structural: /vault is a living record that weaves notes, moments, frames, and artifacts with the essays and now-snapshots the site already had. /now keeps every dated snapshot instead of overwriting, so it shows the path, not just the position. An importer stands ready to bring curated posts over from a decade of Instagram, original dates intact. Vault joins the nav.

WhyA portfolio shows what Allen made; the vault records who he was while making it. Provenance over polish: timestamps, reversals, and things in progress are the point, not a liability.

Design

Paper grain, and a warm dark canvas to match

Added a faint paper grain: fine grayscale noise, overlay-blended so it adds tooth without dulling the page, tuned to a whisper. One texture covers both themes. Warmed the dark background from a cool near-black to a warm ink so both modes feel like the same paper.

WhyOrganic grain reads as material, not the geometric pattern that made the dot grid feel like a glitch. This is the tactile half of paper; the ivory tint was the color half.

Design

Warmed the canvas to paper ivory

Shifted the light background from a cool near-white to a warm ivory. Pure color, no pattern, so it reads as paper stock instead of a screen. A nice side effect: the stickers' white die-cut borders pop a little more against it.

WhyThe honest way to add paper warmth is the material itself, not a texture laid on top. This is what the dot grid was reaching for and failing to be.

Design

Cleaned the canvas: no cursor, no grid

Removed two decorations in one pass: the trailing ring-and-dot cursor and the background dot grid. The grid got three tries (too faint, then distracting, then crisp but still competing), and the cursor's ring read as a glitch over it. Native pointer, bare cream canvas.

WhyWhen a decoration keeps fighting you, it isn't earning its place. The work, the writing, and the stickers carry the personality; the background should recede so they can breathe.

Design

Redrew the stickers that didn't read

Audited the About stickers at their real size. The paintbrush read as a lipstick, the clarinet as a chess pawn, and the guitar as a gourd. Swapped the brush for a paint palette with color dabs, angled the clarinet so the keys and mouthpiece show, gave the guitar a proper figure-eight waist and round sound hole, and tightened the trumpet bell and capybara.

WhyA sticker that needs a caption has failed. If it can't be read in a glance at margin size, it is noise, not personality.

DesignEngineering

One accent color, and a lighter codebase

Gave the site a single signature color, drawn from the 묵 seal: highlight any text and it glows seal red, and focus rings switched from a generic blue to the same. Stickers now peel up on hover so they read as grabbable. Under the hood, deleted an entire orphaned layout-switching system (six components) that nothing rendered anymore.

WhyThe palette had one off-brand color left, the blue focus ring, in an otherwise ink-and-cream site. One accent used sparingly is identity; used everywhere it is wallpaper. And dead code is a tax every future change pays.

Design

Sticker round two: the ones with stories

Four more for the About scrapbook: a film camera, a loaded paintbrush, a red seal carved with 묵, and a capybara with an orange on its head. Each is placed beside the paragraph that explains it; the seal sits next to On the name, since Mook is a homophone for ink.

WhyThe best sticker is one that makes you ask why it is there, and the page answers. The capybara is the retired site mascot, enjoying its afterlife where it can no longer interrupt anyone.

Design

Pixel stickers land on the About page

Nine hand-pixeled, die-cut stickers scattered scrapbook-style down the About margins: a running shoe, the Korean and Canadian flags, Jacob Collier, Hiromi, and a clarinet, trumpet, guitar, and piano. They drag, and your arrangement is saved locally. Drawn pixel by pixel with a render-and-review loop; the runner figure took three attempts and lost to the shoe.

WhyThe About page told the story in words only. Stickers are the margin-doodle layer: the things I love, drawn the way I loved drawing as a kid.

FixEngineering

A second audit, and the work grid gets its proof back

Re-audited the whole site from recruiter, designer, and engineer seats. The flagship card on the work grid now leads with its 75% to 92% result instead of an unlabeled blur, the guide stays closed on browsing pages, ESLint went from seven problems to zero, and dependencies got patched.

WhyAn audit only counts if you run it again after the fixes. The second pass caught a label that had been invisible all along: white text on a cream blur.

DesignEngineering

Instant first paint, visible results, honest thumbnails

Replaced hydration-gated reveal animations with pure CSS so pages paint immediately. Un-blurred the Fee Opt-In results infographic, drew five cover marks to replace near-black screenshot thumbnails, and gave the wide-screen home a small Now rail.

WhyFirst visits started with two seconds of blank screen, and the best case study was hiding its own outcome. Aggregate results are not confidential; product screens are. The blur now knows the difference.

Content

The availability pill comes off

Removed the green Open to roles indicator from the home hero.

WhyThe work should make the case before the status does. The About page still says it in full sentences.

EngineeringFix

Sharing layer: sitemap, robots, one clean share card

Added a sitemap and robots file, then caught my own duplicate: a second generated share image was fighting the hand-made one, so the generators went and the branded card stayed.

WhyLinks to this site get pasted into Slack and LinkedIn by people deciding whether to talk to me. The preview is the first impression before the first impression.

Content

Earned Black, and every em-dash leaves the site

Published Earned Black, an essay on rank, ink, and what depth you cannot shortcut. Retitled two essays and two case studies away from formula. Removed all eighty em-dashes from the site, each replaced by the punctuation the sentence actually wanted.

WhyTitles that read like content marketing undercut writing that is personal. And the dashes were a tell: machine cadence in what should be a human voice.

Design

The guide wins; the chatbot goes

Shipped a streaming AI chat grounded on the portfolio, lived with it for an evening, and removed it the same day. The curated guide took its place and became a real navigator: per-page notes, next-step links, quick nav.

WhyThe chat felt off. An open prompt invites anyone to test the edges; a curated voice says exactly what I want said. Killing your own feature quickly is a feature.

DesignContent

The flagship becomes a feature card

The home page now leads with the Fee Opt-In study as a feature card: the 75% to 92% result over the redacted cover, with a confidential chip. Contact moved to allen@mooque.xyz, and the gateway forms got rate limiting, honest error states, and proper tap targets.

WhyThe strongest evidence was buried in a list. If the work is confidential, lead with the outcome and say why the pixels are blurred.

Design

From capybara to quiet

Retired the animated mascot era: a pixel avatar, Clippy, the Windows XP dog, and a custom capybara all had their day. What remains is a small text guide that knows which page you are on.

WhyFour mascots taught me the personality belongs in the words, not the sprite. Charm that interrupts reading is not charm.

Engineering

Images: 198 MB to 33 MB

Resized and re-encoded every case-study image, fixed uppercase filenames that broke on case-sensitive servers, and pruned dead mascot code and assets.

WhyCase studies were shipping raw design-file exports. And macOS forgives filename casing; Linux does not.

Content

Experiments join the portfolio

Added the Experiments section: Wayfind, ARND, Vesta Press, Mooze, Toronto Yuwol, and Personal Color Analysis, alongside the full personal-project arc from illustration to design systems.

WhyThe range is the point. Side projects show judgment with no one else in the room.

Design

First branding pass: favicon, share card, adaptive theme

Hand-set the ak favicon and share card in the wordmark style, added a theme color that follows light and dark mode, and gave the 404 page the site's typography.

WhyThe details nobody asks for are the ones designers check first.

Older than this, the history lives in git. The format takes after teams that publish their work as it happens; if a change was worth shipping, it is worth explaining.