Martijn Bokma

I live in Drachten, in Friesland, with my wife and our son, where the flat land runs straight into the Wadden Sea. Most of my working life sits between two disciplines that are usually pulled apart: I design the interface and I build it, so nothing gets lost in translation between a mockup and a stylesheet.

For businesses I do web design, front-end development and branding, from the first concept to a site that has to make an impression and keep working. I work for NHL Stenden, a university of applied sciences in Leeuwarden, where I build websites and apps for the academy of Media, Commerce & Entrepreneurship and the Creative Business programme. I help students with everything I know about design, for print and for the web, and I gladly share my knowledge and experience to help them grow. Together with my colleagues I also organize workshops focused on practical skills and on stimulating creativity.

How I work follows the same rule. I am always looking for the solution that works best for me, the way I actually see and use things. For me that means understandable and logical above all: easy to grasp, without unnecessary complexity. Over-engineered solutions put me off, because they are often impractical and hard to handle. I keep things simple, clear and easy to maintain, so I can work fast and efficiently, without obstacles in the way.

I have always been endlessly curious, constantly looking for answers and new insights. Why do they do it this way and not another? What are the underlying reasons and considerations behind their approach? And how can I improve my workflow so I never have to do the same work twice, so I work faster and more effectively?

Calaca UI grew out of the same habit as everything else I build: the same components kept being rebuilt for every product, a little differently each time, and accessibility got checked again from scratch every time. Splitting the skeleton from the skin ended that. The library is the answer I wanted, published as plain CSS classes that work in any stack, including plain HTML with no framework at all.

You can find more about the work at martijnbokma.nl and the code at github.com/martijnbokma.

Calaca is my favorite word in Spanish. I learned it from my Mexican family: my wife is Mexican, and thanks to her and her family my interest in Mexican culture has only grown. It is a small word with a warm sound, and it stuck with me from the first time I heard it.

A calaca is a skeleton, but not the spooky kind. In Mexico the calaca is the friendly one: the skeleton you dress up, paint with flowers and celebrate during the Day of the Dead. Catrina, the most famous calaca, is elegant, a little funny and completely unafraid. The word already carries the feeling I wanted this library to have: handmade, festive and warm, never cold or corporate.

I liked the word before I knew what I would build. When the component library took shape, the fit was immediate: one skeleton that stays the same, and a skin for every product. The name did not describe the project afterwards. It described the idea from the start.