Tim Hanak-Hammerl

Born in Vienna in 1972, I grew up in a city that shaped me from the very beginning with its culture, history, and a distinctive creative energy. The Vienna of my childhood and youth was a place full of contradictions and inspirations – between baroque heritage and emerging modernity, between coffee house tradition and the vibrant spirit of a city reinventing itself. It was precisely this tension between the tried and tested and the new that would accompany my design thinking throughout my life.

In 1993, I completed my training at the renowned Höhere Graphische Bundes-, Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt – an institution that has shaped designers for generations and whose standards for craftsmanship, concept, and visual precision still influence me today. It was there that I learned not only to work with shapes and colors, but to truly see: to recognize connections, translate meaning into design, and understand visual language as a genuine means of communication.

In the years that followed, I gained experience in various advertising agencies that shaped me in many ways. I worked on campaigns of diverse sizes and natures, learned to handle pressure, developed a feel for clients and markets, and above all, refined what is perhaps the hardest thing to learn in the design profession: listening. Because good design never begins with the first stroke, but with the right understanding.

In 2007, it was finally time to go my own way. With the founding of my agency ZWISCHEN DEN HIRSCHEN, I created a place that gives space to my conviction about design – meticulous, independent, and always with an eye for the essential. The name says it all: an image for the moment between things, for the space where real ideas emerge.