The Sausalito, California, based design firm of M.A.D. pushes the boundaries of design with its exuberant graphics and eye-popping interactive work. Formed in 1987 by graphic designers Erik Adigard and Patricia McShane, M.A.D. has produced award-winning conceptual graphic design and illustration, most notably the signature editorial design and imagery of Wired, as well as the magazine's Internet presence. M.A.D. has also brought its unmistakable look to ABC/Disney, Apple, Lotus, Microsoft, and Sony, in addition to exhibiting print graphics and interactive multimedia at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York.

M.A.D. produced the graphic identity for the 49th International Design Conference, held in 1999. The studio also designed Architecture Must Burn, a book coauthored by Aaron Betsky and Erik Adigard, published by Thames and Hudson. In 1997 M.A.D.'s relaunched web site marked one of the web's first experiments in generating HTML code spontaneously (DHTML was soon widely adopted). It won a Gold Award in I.D. Magazine's Interactive Media Design competition as well as first prize in Publish's 10th Annual Design Award.