About me

Since 2003, I have worked as a freelancer at Media-Garage in UX design, web design, and print design. A consistent focus has been the visualization of subject matter, data, and text — from books and magazines to data sheets and complex websites that I developed together with clients in terms of both content and design.

I have always been drawn to the intersection of structure, typography, and web typography. Later I moved deeper into the UX world, driven in part by a market growing ever louder with cheap providers and quick-fix solutions. That is precisely why a clean, considered design with substance has remained important to me.

Through the open-source CMS Drupal, I came into intensive contact with the open-source world and encountered a community whose willingness to help and technical energy still impresses me today. That attitude — open, pragmatic, collaborative — fits well with the way I think about digital tools and systems.

Professionally, I now work in an environment where I help shape frontends, content, and digital access for a broad community. That gives me the good feeling of working on something useful that is genuinely needed in everyday life.

In parallel, I have experienced over recent months just how significantly AI assistants have changed my work. Especially as a solo practitioner in the frontend space, they help me become more productive, clear technical hurdles faster, and refocus on what I do best: interfaces, type systems, grids, structure, and clarity.

CrucibleMark also emerged from this experience. For me, the project is not just a benchmark but an experiment: how far can I get with AI as an assistance system, and where do local open-weight models actually stand in that context? As an amplifier of my strengths and a counterweight to my weaknesses. I wanted to know which models genuinely help me in everyday work, how reliable they are, and what they actually deliver compared to commercial offerings.