How did I get here? – An introduction
Tags: introduction, design, frontend, beginners
Published: 2019-06-18 16:57:46

Hello! I am Ann and welcome to my first post. I am using this as a space to talk about design and web development and share my perspective and thoughts on the inter-workings of both, as well as house the things that are exciting, energizing, and bewildering to me.

> I’m sure, as anyone in this day and age can attest to,
–where we end up, is NOT where we set out to be.

### I am not even working in the field of study I chose for my education.
I set out to be an interior designer and again–not a unique experience–but after months of trying to find a starting position out of school, I realized landing a job might not entirely be on my merits alone.  Thankfully a professor happened to be in the office a friend was interning in at the time and asked if they knew any one that could do drafting work. That led to a residential design position, but most of my work was out in Long Island, or in high rise condos on the upper West and East side.  Most days I had to commute 40 minutes a day to go to job sites. The work was not what I expected or really wanted to be involved with.  I did one awesome project on a (semi-famous!) musician’s audio lounge and media room that I will forever be proud of. But after seeing the sheer amount of money get flushed into projects and all of the waste, financial and otherwise that it caused I had enough of this particular job and residential design in general. I decided it was not for me. Maybe commercial interiors would have been a better fit…maybe the timing was wrong…WHO KNOWS! But I am thankful for the eye opening experience. It gave me the blueprint- no pun intended for managing and being all-at-once self-reliant, decisive and a holder and hub of knowledge.

### On Trying things and failing 
I moved back to Chicago, tried my hand at estimating on large commercial residential projects- which did NOT last long. Had a stent at a high end furniture firm, which again was nothing remotely related to interior design, I was helping other interior designer’s pick things out. Which, was honestly kind of painful and like a slap in the face.   Then I started doing simple graphic design projects, really basic stuff at first.  BUT Instead of waiting months to see the fruits of your design labor like I was on a job site, graphic design was immediate gratification. It was fast paced and this digital world was way more exciting for me. I started to feel confident again, like I could do this.

>I remember a design professor say if you’re a designer, you can design ANYTHING- little did I know they were referencing Massimo Vignelli, but it always stuck with me. 

So I was a beginner again, but re-energized. I tried to get employment doing graphics work. Landed at an apparel company coming up with t-shirt designs and patterns, churning out ideas weekly. I worked on their catalogs, sales materials, the event spaces, and graphics and photography for the e-commerce site.

I knew nothing of the web, coding or otherwise. So little in fact, that back in 2006 I had my friend (Thank you Josh Taylor!) show me how to make a simple site using ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR and PHOTOSHOP (the horror!) to export to html. I realized I needed to learned how to code. HTML and CSS at first and it just expanded on from there.

I am a firm believer that much can be learned online for free when you have the drive, the discipline, and the determination to follow through. Youtube is one hell of a platform. FreeCodeCamp is a fantastic platform in which to learn, Codepen- a welcoming space in which to play and experiment, Stack overflow -a community full of saviors that love problem solving.

###Go iterate yourself!
I ended up using the culmination of all that experience to work on design and development projects, which led to a lot of long term, on going relationships with some amazing people at great agencies and businesses.  Things are ever changing, and hopefully I will be doing something entirely different in the coming years.

So if there is a moral of the story here, it is one of evolution.  Grow. Change. Experiment. Fail. Do a 180. Try something new. Don’t stop, don’t get content, and don’t YOU EVER feel stuck.