I have to confess that I always found UI design in Max 4 to be a little too cumbersome, and would almost always wait until a patch was completely written and debugged before bothering with any layout of UI elements and color. The design process was usually confounded in the end by the fact that it seemed no matter how hard you tried, it still looked like a Max patch (for better or worse). Or, you end up going to great lengths to build a UI and unlock your patch to find a complete mess of patching. I, like many other Max users, convinced myself that I liked the old Max 4 look and that I could deal with the limited color palette and pixelation. I could just build functional patches that did their job and didn't need any polish. That was then. Now, along comes Max 5, with its more user friendly interface-building tools, and I'm starting to think it's time to put a new face on all those old patches. This article is an exploration into my process of breathing new life into some dusty old creations.
