Simon W. J. Hermann
Diplom-Designer(fh)

There is no clear line between "designing" and technically implementing a project. There'll always be decisions made by developers that heavily impact user experience, since It's impossible to design every aspect of an application in advance in a design tool. This is where I specialise, fully comprehending both: user needs and technical possibilities. My dual background in Design and Technology allows me to talk eye-to-eye with teammates (and clients) who have their focus in either fields.

I'm a Design Generalist focusing on UX and UI with a passion for Web Development. Creating user-centred digital products, from scratch to prototype to mirror-polished. Building bridges between Designers and Developers. I have a degree in Design (German Diplom) and I've been building websites for over 10 years now.

Find me on LinkedIn, Twitter, Gitlab or Github.

My (incomplete) list of Skills and Tools

Professional

I can do everything here with supreme quality outputs and in a reasonable amount of time.

  • HTML
  • CSS (Sass/SCSS, PostCSS, BEM, Tailwind, ..)
  • TypeScript, JavaScript
  • User Experience Design (User Interviews, Usability Testing, Wireframing, Information Archtecture, ..)
  • UI Design & Design Systems
  • Web Accessibility (A11y)
  • Sketch, Figma
  • Storybook
  • React / Next.js (due to current Job..)

Advanced

I need to look up things from time to time, but results are on very sophisticated level.

  • Headless CMSs (Storyblok, Contentful, Strapi, Magnolia)
  • Astro
  • Svelte / SvelteKit
  • Vue.js / Nuxt.js
  • Web performance optimisations
  • Web Components (Vanilla, Lit)
  • JAMStack
  • Typography
  • Prototyping Tools (Proto.io, Justinmind, Origami, Marvel, Framer, ...)
  • UX copywriting
  • Adobe Creative Suite (Lr, Ps, Pr, Id, Ai, Xd, Ae), Serif Affinity
  • Photography
  • (technical) SEO
  • Git
  • NPM, Webpack, Rollup, Parcel
  • Greensock (GSAP)
  • Various CSS Frameworks (Tailwind, Bootstrap, Foundation, Pure CSS)
  • reveal.js
  • Further Design Skills (Corporate & Logo, Layout, ..)
  • Test-Driven Development, JS (Unit-)Testing (Jest)

Beginner

I can do stuff here, but mostly I learn as I go.

  • 11ty
  • Testing with Playwright or Cypress
  • SolidJS, Marko, Fresh, Quik
  • Kirby CMS
  • NetlifyCMS, Tina CMS
  • A/B Testing
  • Zdog
  • Docker
  • Processing
  • HTML Canvas
  • Monorepo Tooling (Lerna, pnpm, etc)

Want to learn

  • WebGL
  • p5.js
  • three.js
  • GraphQL
  • Blender
  • vvvv
  • modV
  • Derivative TouchDesigner
  • CSS Houdini

Idle

I did this in the past, but did not really advance in recent years.

  • 2D + 3D Animation (After Effects, Cinema 4D)
  • Making Movies / Recording in Green Screen Studio
  • Wordpress
  • jQuery
  • Service Design

Favourites

›› Design Tools: Pen+Paper, Whimsical, Figma ›› Tech Stack: Vanilla, Astro / SvelteKit, Storyblok, Netlify ›› Editor: VSCode ›› Presentation Tool: reveal.js

Private

In my spare time I try to improve my skills in Woodworking (especially Spoon Carving), Cooking, Hiking, Cycling, Badminton, Skiing and Parenthood.