Hi — I’m Hans Martens, a web designer and developer based in Veghel, the Netherlands. If you’ve landed here from Google, a project page, or a link in one of my other posts: welcome. This is the longer story of who I am, what I do, and how I ended up building this website.
What I do as a web designer & developer
As a web designer in Veghel, I design and build websites end-to-end. The two halves of my work are:
- Web design — layout, typography, colour, hierarchy, and the small details that make a page feel calm and confident instead of busy.
- Web development — turning that design into fast, accessible, well-structured code that loads quickly and stays easy to maintain.
I don’t think of those as separate roles. The best websites come from designing and building in the same head, because every design choice has a code consequence and every technical decision shapes what the design can do.
A hobby, not a business
One thing I should be clear about: I don’t run a business and I don’t work commercially. I’m not chasing clients or revenue targets. I’m driven by genuine enthusiasm for the craft — for designing something well, building it cleanly, and shipping it fast.
See it as a hobby that has grown bigger and bigger over the years. That’s exactly what it is, and that’s exactly how I like it.
How it started — Windows 3.1 and a curious mind
My interest in computers started a long time ago, back when Microsoft introduced Windows 3.1. What began as curiosity quickly turned into a hobby, and not long after, I was online — getting to know this strange new thing called the internet.
When Windows 95 came out, I started working at a PTT Telecom store (today known as KPN), selling the technology of the day: mobile GSM phones, DECT phones, landline phones, fax machines — all of it. It was a great place to be in the middle of a wave of consumer technology arriving in everyone’s home.
By the time Windows 98 launched, my fascination with computers had grown big enough that selling phones wasn’t enough. I went to a computer shop, picked out every component I wanted, and built my first PC from parts. Putting that machine together — knowing exactly what was inside it and why — was the moment the hobby clicked into place.
From CompTIA A+ to the TU Eindhoven
To turn the hobby into something more, I took the CompTIA A+ course and started working as a computer service engineer. I was detached at the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), where I spent my days repairing laptops for students who’d bought them through the university. Every academic year a new model arrived, so I worked my way through a long line of laptop generations — opening them up, diagnosing what had failed, putting them back together so they worked properly.
That work taught me two things I still rely on every day:
- Nothing on a screen is magic. It’s all just layers you can take apart and understand.
- The difference between working and working well is almost always in the details.
I approach a website the same way I used to approach a broken laptop: open it up, understand every layer, and make sure each one is doing its job.
From WordPress to Astro
In 2010 I built my first website with WordPress. I liked the building part more than I expected — and just kept going. For years, WordPress was my home base.
A few years ago I made the switch to Astro, and I haven’t looked back. Astro gives me exactly what I want: zero JavaScript by default, full control over the output, and the freedom to drop in interactivity only where it earns its place. Fast sites aren’t a feature I add at the end; they’re the natural result of building this way. You can see my current stack on the homepage.
Astro Rocket — and this website
Recently I built my own Astro theme, Astro Rocket, and shared it publicly on GitHub. It’s now listed on the official Astro themes directory, so anyone can find it and build their own site with it. You can also read more about it on the projects page.
A few months ago I bought my personal .dev domain — hansmartens.dev — and the site you’re reading right now is the result. I built this website from my own Astro Rocket theme, then kept extending it: adding new sections, refining the design, and writing the blog posts you’ll find around here. A lot of those posts explain how individual parts of Astro Rocket work, so feel free to dig in.
I’ve also started a new project that I’m working on right now. It’ll be released when I think it’s ready — and that will take a while yet. More on that when the time comes.
Working with AI
I’m very much interested in AI, and especially in what it means for web design and development. For me it’s not a buzzword — it’s a genuine new collaborator at the desk, and one that’s changing how I think about almost every step of building a website.
For my projects I work together with Claude Opus 4.7, Anthropic’s most capable model. Claude is a thinking partner more than a tool: somewhere to bounce ideas, review structure, sharpen copy, spot edge cases, and catch the things that would otherwise slip past me. It doesn’t replace the craft — it sharpens it. The result is work I’m more confident in, shipped faster, and built more thoroughly than I could alone.
This week I also started using Claude Design — a brand new way to design and prototype with Claude. I’m still in the early days with it, but I’m genuinely excited about where it can take a one-person workflow like mine, especially for the design half of the job.
Always tinkering — Linux and Raspberry Pi
Web design and AI are far from my only interests. I’m also genuinely enthusiastic about Linux Ubuntu — there’s something I really enjoy about an operating system that’s open, transparent, and built by a community rather than a single company. My main machine is a Windows 11 Pro laptop set up as a dual-boot, with Ubuntu sitting alongside it as the second operating system. I switch between the two depending on what I’m doing, and I keep finding new reasons to spend more time on the Ubuntu side.
I also follow the Raspberry Pi world closely, and I’m especially interested in the Raspberry Pi 5. The idea of a tiny, capable computer you can build a project around — from a small home server to a tinkering platform for whatever curiosity strikes — fits exactly the kind of hands-on hardware spirit that got me into this in the first place. I keep an eye on the news and the new boards as they’re announced.
How I like to work
A few principles I keep coming back to:
- Clean design — restraint over decoration. Every element on the page should have a reason to be there.
- Solid structure — semantic HTML, sensible component boundaries, predictable file layouts. Future-me should be able to open the project a year later and find his way around in minutes.
- Attention to detail — the spacing between a heading and the paragraph beneath it, the focus ring on a button, the way the logo aligns on mobile. None of it is decorative; all of it is the difference between a site that feels professional and one that doesn’t.
- Performance as a default — small payloads, optimised images, no framework overhead I don’t need.
Beyond the screen
I’m not in front of a monitor all day. When I’m not building, I’m usually:
- At the gym — sport keeps the head clear and the back happy after long sessions at the desk.
- Eating something good — I love good food, and I’m a sucker for a proper espresso or cappuccino.
- Talking with nice people — about web stuff, sure, but honestly about anything. The best conversations rarely stay on one subject.
- Out with my two dogs — they have a strong opinion about how much time I should spend outside, and they’re usually right.
Want to say hi?
If you’d like to chat about Astro, web design, building things for the love of it — or just say hello — I’d love that:
- Email — hello@hansmartens.dev
- GitHub — hansmartens68
- Or — head to the contact page.
Thanks for stopping by. If you came here from another post on the site, that one’s probably waiting for you to finish reading — go on, I won’t be offended.