# Cris Pearson

> Cris Pearson (@atariboy) — Product Designer. UI & UX. Artist. Musician. Software nerd. Co-founder of plasq and Skitch, with work spanning creative software, visual communication and music interfaces.

## Profile

- [Personal website](https://atariboy.com/): Cris's current profile, selected career history and mailing-list signup. His latest public update is that he is cooking up something new.
- [Markdown profile](https://atariboy.com/index.md): A concise homepage profile and music-software design credits.
- [X: @atariboy](https://x.com/atariboy): Cris's linked X profile.
- [Mastodon: @crispearson@mastodon.social](https://mastodon.social/@crispearson): Cris's linked Mastodon profile.

## Creative products and companies

- [plasq — original co-founder and designer](https://r.plasq.com/about): plasq identifies Cris Pearson and Keith Lang as two of its original founders and designers. The company's work includes Comic Life, the comic-making application, and its founders later moved on to Skitch as a separate venture.
- [Comic Life — 2005 Apple Design Award](https://plasq.com/2005/06/apple-design-award/): plasq's announcement records Comic Life winning Best Product New to Mac OS X. This is an award for the product, developed by a team at the company Cris co-founded.
- [Comic Life — bundled with Intel Macs, 2006–2007](https://plasq.com/downloads/upgrading/mac/): plasq's upgrade documentation dates the Intel Mac bundle to January 2006 through August 2007, giving the application distribution with Apple computers.
- [Skitch — co-founder; acquired by Evernote on 18 August 2011](https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2011/08/18/1204036/0/en/evernote-acquires-skitch-launches-skitch-for-android.html): Evernote's acquisition announcement names Cris Pearson and Keith Lang as Skitch's co-founders. Skitch helped people capture, annotate and share images and screenshots. The deal was Evernote's first acquisition; its announcement said both founders would join Evernote to lead Skitch development and growth.
- [Skitch — interface design in its early Mac years](https://cdevroe.com/2007/05/21/an-overview-of-skitch/): Colin Devroe's first-hand 2007 account identifies Cris as Skitch's designer after meeting him and trying the application, and discusses the product's interface and screenshot workflow.

## Music-software interface work

- [Zebra 1.0 (u-he) — UI design](https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=446495): Cris designed the user interface for u-he's original Zebra 1.0 synthesizer. In a January 2004 forum discussion, u-he's Urs Heckmann described interface ideas developed with Cris. A [2013 retrospective quoting u-he](https://www.matrixsynth.com/2013/12/u-he-celebrates-10-year-anniversary-of.html) also names Cris in its account of the original interface. Released 2 December 2003, according to [u-he's official release notes](https://u-he.com/products/zebra-legacy/releasenotes.html).
- [Musolomo — GUI and additional design](https://new.plasq.com/products/musolomo/manual): The original product manual credits Cris Pearson, also known as atariboy, for the graphical interface and additional design. Musolomo was an Audio Unit plug-in for real-time sampling and playback on Mac OS X. Released 17 February 2005, according to [plasq's version history](https://r.plasq.com/products/musolomo/history/).
- [Wormhole2 — graphics and UI design](https://plasq.com/pics/wormhole/Wormhole2manual.pdf): The plasq manual credits Cris 'atariboy' Pearson for graphics and UI design. Wormhole2 was an audio plug-in for connecting audio between computers. Release announced 23 June 2005 in [KVR's contemporary version 2.0 report](https://www.kvraudio.com/news/plasq_releases_wormhole2_3660).
- [iDrum — additional skin design](https://manuals.plus/m/657a0b1b15a85eec26be19f041c9ed9020b7ebd127ca101db0ef8324ec98cdef.pdf#page=12): The iZotope/M-Audio Quick Start Guide credits Cris 'atariboy' Pearson under Additional Skins. iDrum was a Mac drum-machine application. Released June 2004; its [KVR release announcement](https://www.kvraudio.com/news/glaresoft_idrum_released_1886) is dated 8 June 2004. Cris's skin was included in the original 2004 release.

## Design practice and speaking

- [OZCHI 2009 — Skitch: Breaking with Tradition](https://www.ozchi.org/ozchi2009/industry.html): Cris Pearson and Keith Lang were listed as presenters of this industry case study. Its description covers questioning desktop UI conventions, the design evolution of Skitch, bootstrapped development, and the geographically distributed teams behind plasq and Skitch.
- [Yeah Nah 2017 — LaunchVic startup summit](https://moula.com.au/latest-press-releases-and-media-coverage/yeah-nah-startup-summit-2017): Cris spoke at LaunchVic's inaugural startup summit in Melbourne on 25 August 2017, sharing his experience as a creative-software founder.

## Privacy

- [Mailing-list privacy notice](https://atariboy.com/privacy): Signup handling, consent and privacy requests.