About — by Nørth

by Nørth is Joern Bargmann — a solo front-end developer working from a shared studio in Balerna, Switzerland.

I studied photography in Nuremberg. It taught me how to look — at grids, negative space, the way light hits a corner. Why one typeface feels right and another feels slightly off.

In 2003, I moved to Italy for a year. Left my photo studio job, lined up remote clients (brave move before broadband), loaded a caravan, and drove south.

Spent a few weeks on a campsite figuring out where to land. Milan was obvious. Como was better — smaller, easier to meet people. Found an apartment, signed a contract I barely understood with help from a patient local agent, and got to work.

The year passed. I stayed. My kids were born in Como in 2008 and 2010. Eventually "living in Italy" stopped feeling like an adventure and started feeling like life.

Now I work from Balerna, just across the Swiss border. Lake Como's still my backyard, just with a Swiss address on the studio door.

by Nørth comes from that geography. I'm the northerner who ended up in northern Italy — Como sits in the far north, so I'm still northern about it. The ø isn't a typo. It's a nod to Nordic design: quiet, precise, built to last.

My photographer's eye is my superpower. It lets me look at a design brief and understand what the designer wants — the weight of a detail, the rhythm in a layout, why a certain grey matters. I read websites like buildings: breaking down structure, understanding how it holds together, then building it properly in code.

Approach

Web development is a craft. I use AI as a coding partner, which lets me focus on architecture, UX, and quality thinking rather than boilerplate. The code that ships is hand-coded, lean, accessible, and progressively enhanced — maintained by a human who knows exactly what it does and why. CMS-integrated so whoever runs the site can do so with confidence.

Collaboration

I work best with small teams — studios where the people making decisions are also making the work. Most projects become long-term partnerships, which tells me I'm doing something right.

When you work with me, you work with me. Not an account manager briefing a junior who messages the developer. Just a direct line to the person writing your code.

For smaller projects, I can handle everything: photography, design direction, development. First brief to final launch.

I speak German, English, and Italian — whichever works for you.

Tools

I work primarily with Craft CMS and Kirby, building on semantic HTML, SCSS/PostCSS, and vanilla JavaScript.

Let's talk

If you're looking for a developer who gets what you're after — and sticks around to get it right — I'd love to hear about your project.

Get in touch