Kristian Baastrup

How I approch my work

A generalist within a highly specialized field.

Background

I grew up around a Macintosh running early versions of Photoshop on the turn of the millenium. Anicent times in a digital context, but I vividly remember the splash screens from that era. As a young teen, I fell in love with graphic design and the internet, and from then on, I knew that I wanted to create digital products and experiences when I grew up.

As a teenager, I started out by designing websites and fell in love with UI. The 960 Grid System. System fonts. siFR. Skeuomorphism. Flash was a thing, responsiveness was not. Constantly pushing bounderies and embracing new technology.

Much has happened since. Smartphones came along. Photoshop was overtaken by Sketch, which again was killed off by Figma. Bootstrap came and went before everything was JS frameworks, Tailwind and utility classes. Tech evolves constantly while trends and tools come and go.

Along the way, I came to realise that I needed to be able to understand code if I ever wanted to elevate my design and marketing skills further. Both because you actually need to be able to understand the technical bounderies but also address the needs of internal and external stakeholders when building a digital product. I believe every designer, marketeer and all other roles working professionally with digital products need to understand code on a fundamental level at least.

Today, within the digital realm, I consider myself a jack of all trades – a generalist within a highly specialized field. Plying my trade in advertising for more than a decade, I have had the chance to touch most of the components and mechanism that make good communication and products.

I like to think of myself as a perfectionist when it comes to my work. In a good way. I strive to deliver flawless designs and strategies. I actually care about documentation, limitations, components, the design system and the context. Even if I am the only person who will ever notice. In the same way, I try to write readable, maintainable, well-documented code regardless of whether if it is for me or an entire team.
If the foundation of a complex digital product is not carefully crafted and maintained, it will break apart and unravel at some point. I have just seen it too many times. I don't know if there is a law for this fact, but there should be.

On a final note; and I think this says a lot about how I approach my work: I love tinkering with things – both digital creations and physical objects. Taking stuff apart to see what makes it tick is just such a natural thing to me. I try to let this translate into what I do in my professional life as well. I strongly believe that you need to have a deep and true understanding of your audience to elevate your marketing efforts. Both on technical and a human level. True creativity is not possible to achieve if you do not understand the possibilites and bounderies presented in the context of your audience.

Current stack

A short list of notable tools and technologies that I currently utilise in my work.

— Figma
Since 2018, I have been using Figma for all my design and prototyping. This is such a good middleground for both designers, clients and developers.

— Tailwind
The CSS framework we always wanted. Writing utility-class CSS is such a joyful developer experience.

— Laravel
I am a pretty good PHP dev. But actually getting to know Laravel was one of my best professional decisions so far.

— Vue.js
Everyone wanted to write React six years ago, but the aweful experience of Facebook Business Tools drove me into the arms of Vue.js. Never looked back.

— Umbraco
Did my first Umbraco project in 2012. Such a good experience for clients. Enterprise, locally developed CMS goodness.

— WordPress
The foundation for my digital existence. I have been involved in the creation of 250+ websites based on this legendary, messy, open source codebase.

— After Effects
Still unparalleled when it comes to motion graphics. Writing ActionScript-reminiscent expressions is true quirky nostalgia.

— shadcn/ui
The de facto standard component library for designing and prototyping modern interfaces. Open source too ♥️.

— Ollama
Easiest way to run LLMs locally. For now. Things tend to change quickly within this field.

— Hugging Face 🤗
Best way to run and test hosted LLMs. It really beats me how this can be free.