About

In 2001, on one of those rare cool summer evenings in Tucson, Arizona, Monte Workman and Ian Johnson were playing ping-pong. The two had met years earlier in the cloudy post-industrial town of Cleveland, Ohio during the Internet’s early days, when the Web was still referred to as the “World Wide Web.” Monte, a designer, and Ian, a tech-guru, had worked together for a company there. They’d both moved to Tucson and both found they liked living in the sunny post-spa town, perhaps better than they liked living in Cleveland. But the work was in Cleveland. Or was it? Wasn’t the World Wide Web everywhere and anywhere?

An elephant lumbered into the backyard.

A few weeks later, they launched MoiaGroup, “MO” for Monte, “IA” for Ian (again, the obvious).

Who are we?
We’re not a big agency. We have low overhead. We work fast. We’re honest. We don’t take on work we can’t handle. We like working with good companies doing good work, artists and independents, and non-profit organizations. We’re based in Tucson, but can work virtually anywhere. We have well-known clients. Each of us has lots of experience.

Monte Workman
Monte Workman, co-founder of MoiaGroup, has over ten years of design experience encompassing media ranging from print to illustration to CD-ROM and web interface design. Trained as a graphic designer (with an MFA from Kent State), he has worked in all levels including initial concept, design execution, art direction, post-web site maintenance, as well as audio and soundtrack creation for interactive media. Monte’s client experience includes American Greetings, Blade Software, Cleveland Live, Cleveland Museum of Art, Eaton Corporation, Ernst & Young, Galderma, GE, Industry Week, KeyBank, Medical Mutual of Ohio, Pinacor, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum.

When he’s not working for MoiaGroup, Monte paints dog portraits and illustrates posters for the George Squier Orchestra (he’s the keyboardist). Monte also has a reasonably good collection of vintage star wars figures and likes to restore old Schwinn bikes.

Ian Johnson
Ian Johnson, co-founder of MoiaGroup, is its official tech-guru. As software engineer, Ian specializes in web-enabled database-driven applications and has extensive experience in all stages of the software life cycle, including requirements gathering, modeling, prototyping, implementation, testing, deployment, and documentation. He has expert programming skills in PHP, Java, and J2EE.

When he’s not at his computer, Johnson can fix just about anything that’s broken — screen doors, clock radios, outmoded bathrooms, and faulty electrical wiring. Ian doesn’t own a car (unless you count his Big Dummy), and thus prefers early morning meetings in the summer. He’s also a pretty good cook and has an unforgiving back-hand slice.