Hi there! My name is Michael Hänsch and this is my website! I‘m glad you made it here, so there is at least one person out there, who is interested in the stuff I do :D. If you didn‘t get it by now: this website is all about me and creative things I do. If you are looking for anything that‘s not related to me in any way, you‘re definitely wrong here! But to all of you who want to know about my skills, this is the place to find out (at least about some of them)!

I‘m a student at the Otto-von-Guericke University/Magdeburg by now and do this in my spare time along with some other projects, so most of what you see is not professional. But everybody who is interested in my skills, can get a little insight with this works. It‘s been a long time doing this stuff, so my workflow is pretty mature. This includes imaging and layout ideation in Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator, as well as coding in Notepad++ (or Dreamweaver if I‘m in the mood ;D).

This website is online since 20/Jun/2005 in an ever changing layout. I‘m the one who‘s visiting this site the most, so I‘m typically also the one who‘s getting sick of the layout first. That‘s the reason why I‘m always looking for new layout ideas I can use for my website. This behavior also has another useful point to it: I practice my skills and (hopefully) get better. So now you‘re looking at layout number 8 (online since 02/Jul/2009, type: onesite layout). It has been online quite a while now so I think it's time for a completely new layout, which I will be doing in near future (I just don't have time for that now.

The section you are looking at now, as you might have already noticed, is called ABOUT and my website has 2 other sections that you can open and close by using the menu below. I removed the section Print / Digital Art / Sketches because it's just not up to date, but it will be featured in the new layout, I promise!

This section is, as stated above, about web pages I did in the last few years. I made a lot more than I can show on my site, so I picked a few which represent the progress I made the best, I think. Some of them are layout ideas I had but didn‘t use, but I think, somehow those have all a nifty twist to them, that makes them worth to show anyway. Maybe they inspire others to make layouts that are based on them. I didn‘t get anywhere I wanted with them, that‘s why I never used them. I don‘t know if I have to say this right now, but there are all kinds of people on the internet, so: get inspired but don‘t copy!

All of those layouts where done in Photoshop first and then coded in either Notepad++ or Dreamweaver. As of now, my personal goal in designing websites is to make them content and user centered. I have the capability to make fancy graphics in Photoshop but I don‘t use them anymore on websites. The Problem with those graphics is, that they are an eye catcher and always distract from the content. This leads visitors to only remember the graphics but not the content. Also graphics often lead to problems with the visitors hardware preferences, as they are not scalable. But if a client wants fancy graphics, I'll make them anyway.

My websites are always designed for the content that is to be transmitted and the recipient of that content. As far as this goes, everybody tends to call that „usability“ nowadays, so I will call it that way, too. MY WEBSITES ARE DESIGNED FOR USABILITY. (That doesn't always apply to my personal websites, because I think that's the only place, where I can do what I want and play around a little.)

This goes hand in hand with coding it completely in XHTML (strict) and CSS. Which offer the best capability for websites to be viewed from any computer out there, without any restrictions.

After all those projects I made (in spare time and for university), I can consider CSS and XHTML my second mother languages :D. That‘s why this section comes first after ABOUT, because it's where I have a lot of skills and it's one thing I can see as a profession for myself in the future.

Ok, now there is not much more to say right now, except that some of those layouts have a link for larger view below the actual picture, so look out for these.

A few years ago, my personal website was all about photography. I had a lot of fun playing around with all kinds of cameras, from Leica to Seagull and in all different formats you can photograph with. I can say I learned more than I expected. It‘s not only about taking a picture, it‘s about perspectives, depth of field, ranges, light and much more. Especially photographing in black & white adds another dimension to it. By limiting yourself to different shades of light it‘s all about simplicity, but that doesn‘t mean that it‘s simple. It‘s actually even harder.

Another fun thing about photographing in black & white is, that I learned to develop films all by myself. It‘s such a thrilling experience to mix some chemicals with the right temperatured water, waiting for a predefined time, just to put in some other chemicals and then, in the end, get a perfectly developed film for the first time in your life. That really adds an extra fun factor to photography.

But, by the time I‘m writing this, photography isn‘t such a big hobby for me anymore. I still have some cameras around, but I just don't do that as often as I used to.

Don‘t get me wrong. It‘s still a lot of fun to go around and search for the perfect shot. But I have enough other interesting stuff to work on and photography always demands a lot of time.

But anyhow, I still don‘t want to give it up and I made some pictures that I just don‘t want to burry somewhere in my closet. That‘s why I still have a section on my website that’s dedicated to photography.

I divided it into two sections, color and black & white, which you can find right under color. But keep in mind, this is only a selection of a very few.