June 21, 2017 — Michael is a designer at Automattic working on Jetpack and WordPress.com. He contributes to the WordPress project and is the most active on the design team. Michael has also been running monthly WordPress meetups in Denver for the last three years.

What the heck can we do to improve the design process on open source projects? Designing for open source projects is difficult and comes with a unique set of challenges. The challenges include communication difficulties, tech limitations, slow implementation times, community pushback, complex developer tools, unique design considerations, and lack of design process. I’m going to address these challenges and propose ways to improve or implement an efficient design process as a community.

December 11, 2016 — Contributor Panel with Michael Arestad, Gary Pendergast, Joe Dolson, Taco Verdonschot and Tina Kesova

December 20, 2015 — Join WordPress designers Sarah Whinnem, Michael Arestad, and Mel Choyce, along with moderator Mikel King, as they chat about designing modern WordPress websites and applications. What tools do they use? What are their thoughts on design trends? What do their design processes look like? What are the best techniques for designing responsively?

December 13, 2015 — CSS in itself can be pretty difficult even when it’s just one person writing it on a project that is small in scope, but what happens when things get bigger? What naming conventions scale well? How do you work on it with a large team? What are the considerations needed for an open source project or really any project? What tools should be used? I’m going to be answering these and discussing a few other issues that may spring up when working on complex projects. I’m also going to talk about things that might drive you crazy, but don’t actually make an impact on your project.

Presentation Slides »

July 2, 2015 — Will your website get loved on? Or shot down? Get ready for this honest, no-holds-barred critique of websites submitted by you, the audience. If you’re brave enough to put your website in front of our panel of experts – design, SEO, technical, and content – you’ll be richly rewarded and armed with great feedback, advice, and a game plan of how to take your site to the next level. The entire audience will be sure to enjoy this fun session and walk away with actionable insights for your site and your business.

November 2, 2014