Who is Sebastian?
Between 2016 and 2019 I participated in the Web Content Management program at University of Borås. Today I’m a Web Content Manager with good senses for creative work and writing web copy as well as web code. I’m the proud owner of a higher degree with specialization in Information Architecture. Before this I was ”only” creative, spending a lot of time building unimportant stuff in Joomla. Unimportant meaning I didn’t have a goal for my projects but rather enjoyed the ride itself.
My name is Sebastian Bernhardtz and I’m 42 years old though considerably younger in mind (not a day older than 29). I’m the father of three lovely sons and a ”bonus dad” for another two great kids. By the end of 2018 we moved to beautiful Uddevalla, living in a nice two floor penthouse apartment in the middle of the city. For a range of reasons we are looking into the possibility of moving back to Gothenburg area.
What’s important to me?
To better answer this quite large question I’m going to divide it into one personal part and another professional part.
Personally
I’m in great need of feeling good both mentally and physically. To pull that off I learned a long while ago that heavy weight lifting and exercise combined with a healthy diet is crucial. In other words, I really enjoy going to the gym several days a week and I have the ability to look at food as fuel. I know, that’s so not impressive but it works!
Professionally
A great deal of any person’s life includes many working hours so to succeed this feel-good race all the time, it’s important for me to actually enjoy the work I’m doing. Feeling proud about how I perform and to know my work really makes a difference is equally important to me.
The latter is something that has taken me a long time to find the courage to invest in and actually reach. Instead of chasing the dream about the perfect job that gives meaning to myself and my surroundings by letting me do what I’m good at, I got stuck in this hamster wheel doing stuff that didn’t give me any value other than money.
what do I do, really?
Between the fall of 2016 and the spring of 2020 I studied at the University of Borås. For personal reasons I took a break during 2018.
Sitting here today with my degree in my hand, I’m spending practically every breathing second of my spare time getting my portfolio up and running. Other than that I work as a consultant, teaching how to code and do design.
Tools and languages
Post university I prefer working with WordPress, why this is also the CMS my portfolio has been developed with. Tools and techniques preferred when creating stuff all belong to different categories.
Workflow & Problem solving
Whenever a new project is started I’m more than happy to make use of my skills within design and UX to get a deep understanding of what the problem is, if and when or where the user comes in to play and what needs there are to solve the problem. Tools used:
- Adobe XD
- Figma
- Invision Studio
- Photoshop
- Illustrator
- Trello
- Milanote
Coding
After coming up with several design ideas and possible outcomes have been set (following a series of iterations) and boiled them down to only one really great solution, the next but equally rewarding step is… Coding!
So, what is coding to me?
Well, obviously there’s nothing new under the sun because my tool stack consist of:
- HTML5
- SCSS / CSS
- Javascript
- Git / Github
- node.js
- Webpack
- Parcel
- PHP
However there are techniques I really would like to learn how to master:
- React
- Vue
- PHP*
* in depth
Last but not least – The Content
Through my education I’ve learned about targeted copywriting, optimized for accessibility, sustainability, equality, commerciality and search engines.
The artifact developed most often need more than just code to bring joy and usability to the users. It needs images, texts and perhaps even video. I almost always use Photoshop to prepare my images no matter what the job – retouching or making compositions. The exceptions are of course logo work, print art and such. In these cases I use Illustrator instead. If I’m hired to make a brochure I tend to use InDesign and for editing video my favorite is After Effects.