Michael Baumgardt

Biography

In 1989, Baumgardt helped to launch Keys, a keyboard and computer magazine in Germany while also working as editor for SOUND CHECK, another musician magazine by the same publisher (PPV). Keys was competing at that time with the much larger and more established German Keyboards magazine. Among the notable articles that Keys featured was an interview with Oskar Sala, the German composer and inventor of the Mixtur-Trautonium, and a round table interview with the leading American manufacturers of synthesizers. In 1994 he also started a book publishing company for Computer Music & Electronic. The first title, Key Report (written by Hans-Joachim Schaefer and Lars Wagner), was a collection of vintage and current synthesizers.

However, Baumgardt left the agency and his publishing company to pursue his music. In 1991 he moved to Boston, USA, to study at Berklee College of Music [1]. He continued writing for PAGE [2] as their US correspondent, a position that he held for many years. Other magazines he wrote for include Internet World [3], Print Process [4], KONR@D, c't [5], Mac Design and Photoshop User [6]. 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. At one point, 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 [7]), Illustrator (Addison-Wesley, 1997 [8]), Fractal Painter (ITP, 1995), DTP kreativ!(Springer, 1996 [9]), Web Design kreativ! (Springer, 1997 [10]) and Web Design mit Photoshop 5 (Addison Wesley, 1998 [11]).

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 [12]), a computer book on web design and HTML. Having designed all his books, 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 that leads 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 Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Portuguese and many other languages.

Today many consider 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. Baumgardt has been also a speaker at several of the Photoshop World Conferences [13].

In 2004 he published QuarkXPress 6 for Print and Web (Peachpit Press), which was highly praised by Shellie Hall [14], the official Xpress evangelist of Quark.