Thank you very much for agreeing to answer some of our questions Mike, Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you like to do when you are not designing? No problem, and thanks for this opportunity! My name is Mike, I am 20 years old, in college, and other than work I quite enjoy playing and watching soccer (football) matches. I also enjoy chess, movies, and spending time with my girlfriend. Could you give us a brief description of your role at Audentio Design? Certainly. I have carried every role imaginable in the past, but these days I focus more on quality assurance, developing new products, and making sure our customers are taken care of. I recently asked a phenominal designer, Ryan McGrane, to help me expand and so far we have a lot of great ideas that we plan to impliment in the near future. But my role would be pointless without the great efforts put in by our team. Each of them do astounding work. Audentio is a very interesting name, what is the story behind it? How did you think of the name Audentio? It took me around a week to come up with the name. I wanted a name that was so very unique, and yet it couldn't be something just completely made up. Having an appreciation for Tolkien, Paolini, Butcher, Rowling, and other great authors, I also developed an intrigue for old latin. Audentio is a slightly modified word for that which is 'bold' or 'courageous'. So putting two and two together you get something like "Bold Design" as the english translation. Oh, and one other thing was necessary before I settled on the name. It needed to return absolutely no results in Google. That way, I can sort of see how well we were doing without having my data obscured from other designers. Since you started out in the design industry what has inspired you the most and given you the motivation to stick by it? In the beginning, I designed just for fun. A friend's wife showed me Photoshop and I quite liked it. As I played around with it more I began to seek out inspiration. At the time that I truly got interested in forum design, I must have been around 13 or 14, and I was running vBulletin 3.X, and in my opinion there was no better designer than John Simpson of vBSkinWorks. His creativity inspired me to step outside the box and try new things. From there, I developed my own style. I don't find myself to be a creative person. But I do claim to know what looks good, and that comes from years of critiquing other designers. And specifically in response to your question, the drive to help myself and those around me has been enough motivation to keep going. I also just simply enjoy creating what I do. Audentio is a well known design company among webmasters but has it brought any recognition in the outside world? Yes, I would say that we have had some recognition from non-webmasters. No awards or ceremonies or anything, but I have been invited to hold a chair at our local small business organization for youth entrepenuers. I've done a lot of charity work for organizations locally that have helped to make the community a better place, and they have individually recognized us as well. Out of all the designs Audentio has created over the years which one do you think was the most remarkable and unique? It is extremely difficult to decide on a single design. If I am allowed to choose from ones that I have done, I'd say Mark Lundholm's would be my personal favorite. You can see a preview here: http://www.audentio.com/images/portfolio/sites/large/marklundholm.jpg As for what the rest of our team has done, I can honestly say that they each have each made work that was extremely impressive and I couldn't honestly just pick one. Have you ever had any high profile clients / big company's order designs? Audentio Design has worked for a multitude of multi-million dollar companies. (if only they would share a million or two with me ) I recently got the job to do the main website and logo for Roscoe, IL, (a municipality here in the States). I might also get the job to do the "Welcome to Roscoe, Illinois" and "You are now leaving Roscoe" signage. I've also done a site for a comedian who has been on Comedy Central and many of the large American television stations, Mark Lundholm (marklundholm.com). The Radisson Hotel in New Mexio had me design their mascot and their website as well. I've also had the opportunity to meet some very important people locally and have a hand in developing their website and corporate identity. Another job that I am currently working on is MyBB.com's mascot. We have done work for thousands of people, from the first time webmaster to the large corporation. We do our best no matter who it is, and treat each job as if it were our own project. Audentio seems to be developing XenForo themes pretty quickly, was it easy to adapt to? What are your thoughts on XenForo? Our team has always consisted of people who are very comfortable working with forum software, and we have had the opportunity to work with pretty much every mainstream forum software and then some. I speak for all of us at Audentio Design by saying that we have immense respect for the developers and administrators at XenForo. The software is amazing, and extremely comfortable for webmasters, designers, developers, and all others alike. I used vBulletin 4 beta before I used XenForo, and I hated vBulletin's template system. And when I came to Xenforo, at first glance, I thought it was the same. But how wrong I was. It didn't take me long to fall in love. I've made extremely customized skins in a matter of a few hours, thanks to the style variables. And if I might add, XenForo is (I think) the first mainstream to allow people to create their own individual templates WITHOUT a plugin or modification. That is the way it should be done, helps me organize so much better and that feature alone makes me happy. I love it, and XenForo has our full support. And lastly, What does the future hold for Mike Creuzer and Audentio Design? We will continue to develop new products for XenForo. We will also continue making sure those that come to us have a pleasant experience, even if currently we are low on help. For those who have had to wait for theme development, we are very sorry, and we are trying to find more skilled developers and designers to help carry the load. That said, we have been experimenting with new tools to make our clients modify our themes easier than ever before. We are always open to suggestions as well on how we can do a better job. We will continue to learn and grow from our mistakes to be as good as we can be. Audentio Designs have generously offered 20% off all purchases to Admin Forums members, You can grab your discount by using the coupon code AdminForums When purchasing any theme from Audentio.com. - Cheers Mike! (Valid until the 1st of December 2011)
