I’ve lived all over the US but I consider myself from, and I’m currently living in, Arizona 🌅
It’s been a long road of trying to find a career that I would find fulfilling and engaging. I stumbled into marketing and SEO work a few years ago and after a while I started to really pay attention to the aspects of the job that I really liked.
I realized that when I got to spend time crafting up an email flyer or landing page layout, I could spend hours just tinkering around and completely lose track of time. I started to branch out and help friends and family build websites or design album layouts but I was always troubled by the fact that I don’t consider myself artistic. I loved playing with how things should look and feel but I couldn’t really draw an amazing header logo or unique graphic print.
Because of this, I started to have a preconceived notion that only graphic designers could exist in the front-end world. I started trying to learn how to code but I found it more of a chore than something I’d get lost doing.
My luck changed when I started my current position and met a group of extremely talented UX/UI designers. While they were definitely artistic spirits, I noticed that the work they were doing didn’t require them to be masters in Photoshop. They were using Figma all day, every day. Building wireframes and prototypes while working with everyone else to ensure our product was customer centric.
It was a revelation.
I could be a UX/UI designer without being a graphic artist? Sign me up!
It took a while but I finally gathered the courage to jump in with both feet by signing up for a bootcamp and committing to making the switch towards something I can see myself doing for years to come.
I enrolled in the UX/UI bootcamp because it looks to have all the tools in place to help me understand UX/UI process and systems so that I can have a foundation with which I can actually land a job.
My typical day will play out like so:
⏰ Wake up around 6:00/6:30 and do some light reading (Brandon Sanderson, Design books). Maybe workout, maybe not. We’re not all perfect.
💼 Around 8:00 AM, head the 150 feet to my office and start work. Sprinkle in some design blog reading or something orientated to the coursework during my work day.
🍎 When it’s a school day, I’ll put my work stuff on mute and focus in on the class for the 2 hour block. I’ll follow that up with immediately jumping into any coursework for the day.
🕯️ On non school days, I’ll try and maintain a window of time where the only thing I do is work on design related studies.
🌆 During the evenings I’ll typically unplug and try and relax with my wife and our dog. Eat dinner, watch a movie, go for a walk or drive. Get out of the house.
🛏️ I’ll read 30-60 min before bed and be lights out by 10:00 so I can do it all again the next day.
I’ve attempted to have my workspace be as unencumbered as possible. I want to be able to sit and focus without (too many) distractions.
The most recent product that really made me feel like a kid again was Procreate.
I caved and bought an iPad late last year and wanted to play around with the Apple Pencil and I was immediately impressed with the app. It’s so intuitive that I was able to figure things out through simply playing around with the app and trying things out that I thought would work. I love how simple the layout is which makes it more freeing to just try and experiment vs be overwhelmed with options (Adobe).
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