Hi, I’m Mads!
I’m 53, married with two kids, an avid reader, and a
Lego enthusiast. I’ve spent over 30 years working at the intersection of
web development, design, and leadership, focusing on creating accessible,
high-performance web experiences. My career spans from hands-on
development to mentoring and educating fellow developers. I thrive on
finding creative solutions, whether building with code or bricks, and am
passionate about sharing my knowledge with the broader tech community.
Over three decades in tech, I've seen trends come and go — frameworks rise and fall, paradigms shift, and buzzwords fade. But AI is very different. It's the single most transformative force I've encountered in my career, and it has empowered me to finally realize long-held dream projects that were previously out of reach for a solo developer.
I started my professional journey at 11, working for Denmark's largest comic book publisher, adapting foreign comics for Danish print formats. By 12, I launched a comics fanzine, editing and publishing over 25 magazines and a book on my favorite artist, André Franquin. During high school, I organized two exhibitions on comic art and gave a graphic design lecture, which sparked my passion for sharing knowledge.
My interest in technology was ignited by a VIC-20 computer, which led me to manage printed catalogs and later develop an IT system for Copenhagen's oldest comic book store. In 1992, I created a Visual Basic app for managing products, customers, invoices and subscriptions — an innovation that replaced their outdated command-line system. By 1995, I developed the store’s first website, which evolved into an e-commerce platform by 1997.
In 1999, I founded my own company, where I offered a wide range of services, including graphic design, web development, app creation, and comic book production. During this time, I lettered over 1,000 comic books, designed and developed more than 50 websites, and built numerous apps. Some of my work was highly specialized, such as the creation of two apps for the Danish Health Authority. These apps streamlined processes for managing medical paper inventories and calculating vaccination risk profiles. My company also designed printed ads, branding materials, and logos for a diverse set of clients, ranging from small businesses to large organizations.
By 2014, my main client was significantly affected by the economic downturn, leading me to join Valtech, a leading global web agency. Over the next seven years, I grew into the role of Technical Director for Frontend Development, where I oversaw large-scale projects and mentored teams of developers. I founded and led Valtech’s "Frontend School," a global initiative that created an interactive learning environment for developers, particularly helping more introverted individuals demonstrate their technical abilities. I also specialized in accessibility and performance optimization, conducting audits and presenting actionable recommendations for websites, informed by my personal experiences with Carpal Tunnel syndrome.
In 2021, I decided to focus on a project that emerged from my time at Valtech. I had developed "OneBlock," an extension for the Optimizely platform, which allowed non-technical users to build rich, visually appealing content components. This tool quickly gained traction and was adopted by major companies such as Telia and Coloplast. Eager to explore how this concept could be expanded to the burgeoning world of headless CMS systems, I co-founded Perfection.dev in 2022. This platform provided a visual preview environment for websites using multiple headless sources, aimed at simplifying the workflow for content creators and developers alike. Despite early success and securing investment, we eventually decided to sell the company in 2024 due to slower market adoption of headless CMS technology than anticipated.
Throughout my career, I’ve maintained a strong passion for sharing knowledge. Writing about development and coding remains one of my greatest joys, with articles featured on CSS-Tricks, LogRocket, and other well-known platforms. My Dev.to page, where I regularly post, has attracted over 40,000 followers, and my work is often highlighted in CSS newsletters and industry discussions.
In addition to my professional work, I’ve created browser.style, a CSS library with over 160 components that use minimal CSS, support both left-to-right and right-to-left text directions, and prioritize accessibility. It’s my passion project, something I love working on, as it combines my dedication to simplicity and inclusivity in web development.
AKQA, Copenhagen
A year with various consultancy tasks, the biggest being a large e-commerce project, where I had to brush off my SQL knowledge from 25 years ago.
alert, confirm and prompt
At Perfection, I've been working on a bunch of different stuff, demo sites (Vanilla, Nuxt and React), and more. My primary focus has been on the visual designers:
As a freelance consultant, I worked on a number of projects, including architecture and development for:
As a Technical Director, I was responsible for the frontend-architecture, and the frontend-lead on multiple projects, including:
I took a Google Tag Manager certification, and helped with setup- and configuration on a bunch of sites, including:
Between 2003–2014, I developed and maintained two applications for the Danish Health Authority:
I co-founded Forlaget Zoom with a good friend and ex-colleague, and while I was a part of it, we published more than 200 childrens books and comics.
I was responsible for the graphic design, and the layout of these books. I left in 2014, but the company is still going strong.
Between 2005–2010, as a digital consultant, I was responsible for the development of more than 20 websites, and intranet-solutions for Egmont Digital.
As a graphic designer, I was responsible for the layout of more than 800 publications, among those “Beetle Bailey”, “Pixar Cars”, “Star Wars”, “Hello Kitty”, “Asterix” and others.
I used my JavaScript-skills to extend Adobe InDesign and Adobe PhotoShop with custom scripts, to automate the layout-process.
Developed a bunch of applications for Recall and Iron Mountain, including:
I founded my own company, Websound (later The Frontend Agency) in 1999.
Throughout the years, I've been responsible for the graphic design, and the development of websites and applications for a bunch of clients, including:
I started as a messenger boy for the comic-book store Fantask, when I was 12 years old.
Later I did the graphic design for their catalogues, founded a merchandise store — and did the development of their first website.
I have written a lot about web-development and graphic design throughout the years. Some of my articles can be found here:
I'm the author of a CSS-library entitled browser.style. It's a minimalistic approach to CSS, and can be found at browser.style.
Besides core and base-styles, the project contains more than 165 components, some of them highly complex Web Components.
Mads Stoumann
Lead Web Developer & Technical Evangelist
Phone: +45 20 70 14 33
LinkedIn: dk.linkedin.com/in/madsstoumann
CodePen: codepen.io/stoumann
Email: [email protected]