Born into a family of professional photographers, Jan Hanus was destined to become an artist. Born in 1974 in then-communist Czechoslovakia, Jan showed a talent and interest in drawing and painting at a very young age. Fostering that talent, his parents signed him up for after-school art classes when Jan was seven, which led to a secondary school education focused on design and printing. Upon finishing secondary school in the fall of 1989, Jan was accepted into a four year desk-top publishing p...
 

Born into a family of professional photographers, Jan Hanus was destined to become an artist. Born in 1974 in then-communist Czechoslovakia, Jan showed a talent and interest in drawing and painting at a very young age. Fostering that talent, his parents signed him up for after-school art classes when Jan was seven, which led to a secondary school education focused on design and printing.

Upon finishing secondary school in the fall of 1989, Jan was accepted into a four year desk-top publishing program at the Printing Apprentice Training Center in Prague. At the time of Jan’s matriculation, DTP was experiencing a revolution in the process of preparing printed data and thanks to Jan’s computer and graphic skills he was one of the first students to utilize the new computer-based printing technology. Jan successfully completed his studies in 1993 and in 1994 he was obligated to enlist in one year of military duty for the Czech Republic. In 1995, Jan was able to begin his career as a Mac graphic designer at the advertising company E/B/D Interpartners. After more than a year of creative learning and experience, Jan took a chance and moved to Vancouver where he worked as a photographer’s assistant for his uncle Josef Hanus’ successful tourism book and calendar company JH Fine Art Photo (www.jhphoto.ca).

Back in Prague in 1997, Jan worked briefly as a graphic designer for the advertising department of Prog Travel Agency, before the company went bankrupt, after which Jan began freelancing as a designer, photographer and desktop publisher. Continuing his freelance work, Jan also took a job in 1998 as a graphic designer and photographer for the internal affairs division of telecommunications company Aliatel. Two and a half years later Jan ventured out to start the company H Design International, Ltd. with his father, Jan Hanus, Sr., where he worked on all stages of design and print work. A tremendous advantage of Jan’s work at H Design, which his father continues to run, was that he took pictures for 99 % of all design work and was therefore able to control the entire process from sketching to taking pictures to design to desktop publishing all the way through to cooperating with the print house.

Jan is an avid outdoorsman, which lends insight and experience to his photography. In his free-time, he enjoys hiking, fly-fishing, scuba-diving, traveling, swimming and social and environmental activism. In 2007 Jan moved to Washington, DC with his wife Bethany Shaffer.

Experience: 19 years experience in Graphic Design and DTP; 14 years experience in classical and 9 years in professional digital photography; 19 years experience in printing technologies; 9 years experience in scanning on a professional drum scanner ScanMate

Languages: English - Advanced

Advantages: Creative, thorough, motivated, flexible, quick to learn and independent.

Skills and Abilities: Mac/PC - Adobe InDesign/Photoshop/Illustrator, Quark XPress