![](/media/about/voxel-pc-animated.webp)
Web development since 2004.
👋 Hi! I am Laurens Bruijn.
This is a short story about how I became a frontend developer.
When I was 10 years old, I found out that it was possible to create your very own website.
Back then, a friend of mine had just created a website using freewebs.com, and I was so intrigued by the fact that it was possible to have your own little space on the web, that I immediately followed.
This free website had so many limitations regarding the design that I soon started learning about HTML and CSS, the coding languages of the web.
![](/media/about/old-website.jpg)
During that time the web consisted mostly of webpages with images as 'fancy' buttons, often arranged in layouts that
were put together using <table>
s or now-antiquated <frame>
s.
This process of creating my own space on the vast ocean called the internet was really magical to me, so I gladly invested my time in teaching myself the ins and outs of coding.
I copied the website of my elementary school by checking the source code and started stripping everything out that I didn't need. Eventually this led to my first personal website, which was a collection of some Flash games and animations which I copied over from my favourite websites.
It had a guestbook and a very insecure login system made by creating a maze of buttons and pages, where you could login only after pressing the correct order of buttons.
Communication & Multimedia Design
Luckily I improved my frontend skills a lot since then.
Between 2012 and 2017 I studied the bachelor Communication & Multimedia Design at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, learning the principles of research-based design, motion- and ux/ui design and project management.
![](/media/about/lecture-responsive-design-2012.webp)
Since 2012 I've been working as a freelance frontend developer, creating websites, and (web) applications for individuals, companies and the government of the Netherlands.