Michael Baumgardt is an internationally acclaimed expert and book author on Desktop Publishing and Web Design.
In 1989, Michael Baumgardt helped to launch KEYS, a keyboard and computer magazine in Germany while also working as editor for SOUND CHECK by the same publisher (PPV). Under Michael Baumgardt’s creative and editorial direction as editor-in-chief, the KEYS magazine became a trendsetter magazine regarded widely as the best magazine on modern music electronic.
Having graduated with a design degree, Michael Baumgardt was also actively involved in the design process, including a complete redesign of the magazine, pushing the envelope of design for magazines at that time.
With this experience and know how, Michael Baumgardt left his position as editor-in-chief of KEYS and started an advertising agency in Munich, which, over the years, worked for many clients from the fashion, clothing and media industry, including accounts like Rebook, MAC, Premiere TV and many more.
While working as a designer, Michael Baumgardt started writing for PAGE magazine, Germany’s largest Desktop Publishing magazine. He contributed many of the articles for the monthly magazine, becoming very well-known in the DTP community.
After selling his business, Michael Baumgardt moved to Boston, USA. He continued writing for PAGE as their US correspondent, a position that he held for many years. Other magazines he wrote for include Internet World, Print Process, KONR@D, c’t, Mac Design and Photoshop User. At that time he also started writing computer books on Desktop Publishing. In only a few years he became the most well-known and sought after author in Germany. His books were widely regarded as the best books on the subjects. Three of his books were listed at the same time in the top ten best-selling computer graphic book list. Among his many titles were books on QuarkXPress (Addison-Wesley, 1998), Illustrator (Addison-Wesley, 1997), Fractal Painter (ITP, 1995), DTP kreativ!(Springer, 1996), Web Design kreativ! (Springer, 1997) and Web Design mit Photoshop 5 (Addison Wesley, 1998).
Drawn by the Internet Boom, he moved in 1996 to New York and published his first book in English (Creative Web Design, Springer Publishing, 1997), a computer book on web design and HTML. Having designed all his books, Michael Baumgardt transcended the barriers of books and magazine by including interviews with the leading Web Designer and Information Architects, like Clement Mok and Marc Crumpacker (Studio Archetype).
The book leading to his international breakthrough was “Web Design with Photoshop 5.5”. First published in Germany for Photoshop 5.0 (in 1998), it was picked up by Peachpit Press in the US for version 5.5 of Photoshop and was soon published internationally in more then ten languages, like Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Portuguese.
Today many consider Michael Baumgardt the leading expert in his field. Scott Kelby, editor-in-chief for Photoshop User magazine, and a well-known Photoshop expert, said about Web Design with Photoshop: “Probably the most comprehensive book on Web Design with Photoshop ever written, and in my opinion the best book on the subject. Every Web designer should have a copy.” In the Photoshop CS1 release (version 8) of Photoshop, Adobe included one of his tutorials in the Welcome Screen. Michael Baumgardt has been also a speaker at several of the Photoshop World Conferences.
In 2004 he published QuarkXPress 6 for Print and Web (Peachpit Press), which was highly praised by Shellie Hall, the official Xpress evangelist of Quark.
Since 2007, Michael Baumgardt is working internationally on projects in the US and Europe for companies such as Discovery Channel.