The Journey of Being Self-taught - Part 1
Do you ever start a journey without knowing where youāre going? without knowing the real cost and when itāll end? I certainly donāt, and if someone ever told me that my career would feel like this, I would have laughed. Everyone that knows me understands that Iām a planner because I go on a vacation trip with a year ahead of plans, reservations to attend, and carefully chosen flights. It gives me the freedom to enjoy the trip without worrying about the road because itās clear of roadblocks, or at least those that depend on me, all the while I can have serendipity during the time spent at each place IĀ visit.
It turns out that my professional career was nothing like that, especially the part where I assumed that my learnings from the university would be the main tools for my future job, whatever it was going to be. Looking back at where I started and where I am right now, it canāt be farther from theĀ truth.
When I was just starting the university, career pivoting was a foreign concept for me. Weāre taught from a young age that what you study in the university will be a determinant of who you become, but as the years went by, I found more and more people switching gears to something that made them happier than their original plan, and it was totally ok. Iāve met Graphic Designers that turned out to be amazing Software Developers, Operations Managers, and even Data, Analysts. So this is how I pivoted my career from Graphic Design to Product Design, and more recently, a leader and manager with a soft spot for BusinessĀ Design.
This article is part of a series where I explore my journey of learning Product Design on my own, you can check chapters two and three to read the fullĀ story.
Call to Adventure
It all started when a friend of a friend asked me if I wanted to do freelancing during my second year at the university. I was extremely busy at the time, or so I thought, but the idea of freelancing for international clients that promised to pay better was appealing, at least to get my hands dirty and learn how to freelance on myĀ own.
The term āfake it ātil you make itā perfectly described the way I felt when I found out that the client wanted me to do UI Design, which I didnāt even know existed, but it involved technology, and everything related to it fascinated me since a child, so I decided to give it a go. My very first designs were done with Photoshop, cranking up dozens of website redesign proposals for potential clients of the company I was working with, it was fast-paced scrappy work but taught me to iterate quickly and also realize how much manual work was needed in theĀ process.
I was just starting in the field, back when it was still being called Web Design and no one was talking about UI or UX Design (at least not in El Salvador), so maybe it was just the lack of sense of community that made me consider it a temporary gig. My bookmarks folder was almost empty because I thought deleting it was just a matter ofĀ time.
But curiosity got the best of me, and just like Alice, I entered into a rabbit hole where I slowly but surely encountered great resources to guide the first steps of my newly discovered path.
1. Articles, Articles, and MoreĀ Articles
It started with a couple of āHow to optimize Photoshop for Web Designā, āHow to design buttonsā and āMobile Design best practicesā, but I never expected to end up with hundreds of articles with up to five levels of nesting due to the number of categories needed to organize the content. My rule of thumb was simple: If itās related to Web or Mobile Design, I have to readĀ it.
I read as much as I could, bookmarked everything that seemed useful enough to come back again in the future to re-read, and started to discover a whole new world in front of me. Nowadays, Iām much more intentional about what Iām reading because Iām focusing on certain topics, but I know that I wouldn't be where I'm right now if I hadnāt read as much as I did during the first couple ofĀ years.
2. Looking at Inspiration EveryĀ Day
Iām not sure if itās a common feeling among young designers, but I knew when I was just starting that my work could be far much better than how it looked like. During that time I came across From up North (back when it was a blog and not a Pinterest board), a curated source of inspiration with many categories to choose from, and decided to challenge myself to go through every single entry of the +100 that already existed. Guess what? I didĀ it.
I reached the point where a teacher at the university would show some references in a class and I had already seen it before. I wanted to see good design more often because I knew that by doing so I would develop a better perception of how to improve my designs, and it certainly did.
Nowadays, I look for inspiration mostly in real products and explorations of feasible concepts that can be adapted to new use cases. These are some of the places where I get inspired while searching for newĀ ideas:
3. ToolĀ Testing
The nature of working solo and remotely gave me some freedom to decide which tool I liked or not, rather than what was best for others. In my pursuit of trying to create something that felt āmore realā, I started looking for options built with UI Design in mind. No offense Photoshop.
Thatās how I found that prototyping tools like Pixateāāāwhich was shut down in October of 2016āāāand Webflow existed. There werenāt that many tools back then, especially not for Windows, but tools like these led me to believe that I could find more ways to achieve betterĀ results.
This constant experimentation made me realize that there were many other tools out there, so every time I came across a new tool I gave it a try, to test how it would incorporate into my ever-evolving workflow. Every year I would find new ones, and replace existing ones and that approach helped me define a reliable personal toolkit that I couldĀ trust.
A really good way to stay in the loop of current, new, and even non-related but still useful tools is to check databases and communities likeĀ these:
It's always more enjoyable to learn with others than to do it alone, so don't hesitate to reach out on Twitter @laurieesc if you want to continue the conversation. If this article has been helpful, share it with a friend!
Over and out,
Laura āļø