Tales by Designer
Chapter 1: Winked by design…
Back in early 2003, I found myself in front of the future. A critical decision to make which could guide my career in the next years or give me a chance get a job in the chaotic and rising social media era.
I was in the middle of high school when I decided to choose a technical degree in software development. It would be 3 years of code before graduating and take the next step in college. By that time, I was thinking on gaining some money in the future, not actually in my likes.
I remember I was sharing classes with mates who chose advertising design as their future career. While I was learning to code and do some research about logical diagrams, these classmates were creating magic with some interesting software tools capable of removing face imperfections and put creative colors and shapes in a canvas; everything with fancy-colorful G3 iMacs. Some days, when I had some free time, I visited these guys named: Designers. I enjoyed asking them questions about the tools they used and for some reason I came back the next day with more questions for them, so after some time with this behavior, I noticed that I felt attracted and winked by design.
During the next years in high school, I worked on various projects, coding and looking for product solutions, but something inside was always pushing me to offer not only a functional system but an aesthetic solution which users could find comfortable, easy to use, memorable, and why not, beautiful and meaningful. I started to create fictional companies (what I still do) to apply some style to my solutions back then. I wasn’t clearly aware about what Design word meant, but suddenly it was part of my projects.
The first year I spent learning about design at high school was limited by the time I had to spend doing homework, study how to code, pieces of time to visit the advertising lab and obviously the poor chance to get a software license. My classmates found a way to get a portable version of Photoshop which shared among them. I was really interested in getting the software, so I got a 16mb USB drive (portable app was chopped in files ) and managed to bring it home after a some days. It was Photoshop 7.0, I still remember that eye and a sailboat image in top of the toolbar.
Step by step, I started to investigate more about what Photoshop was capable of doing, but unsuccessfully tried to replicate what I found in Internet. Documentation was also limited due to Internet access in my country. Only companies, schools or cafes had the chance to have decent and speedy connections; but I still managed a way to experiment by asking questions to my classmates and even to their professors.
For the rest of that year, I felt disappointed because I was unable to find a way to apply some visual taste to the ideas I had in mind. I started to focus more on the code and the projects I had to deliver, because at the end, it was the career I chose from the beginning; however, I didn’t quit on design, I saw a lot of value on it.
The next years passed while I was coding, but I found that my software development classmates were showing solutions in a lazy grey/dark blue colors combination (I know you remember those 1998 Windows apps) and even my professors developed the same kind of solutions. It didn’t matter if it wasn’t attractive, just if it worked. For me it was ideal to make it work, but I couldn’t avoid to see vague solutions and with a lack of usability, a critical word that I learned years later.
I ended up graduating from high school with a technical degree in software development, but instead of going after that, I decided to move to English Translation bachelor degree; however, design was still on my mind. I started to appreciate visuals and advertising and all what comes with marketing and communications. I loved the idea of share a powerful message thru that and how could that influence users decisions. However, my main idea about design was still about colors, images and typography.
Some years later, I decided to start in design with an Adobe Certification which included Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. I found a great opportunity in mixing it with a web development knowledge and when that came, I started to find a couple of words with a lot of meaning, a couple of words that were a mind-blowing change, those two words are now commonly named User Experience and it detonated what could be my first role in design so far, but we know now that it constantly evolves and this could be the start of something even bigger.
Design has been a journey for me, greater than just visuals and I am sure it will continue like that in the next years. That’s the power of design, it doesn’t have a shape or a way to be executed, it doesn’t fade with the time but evolves. It has been part of everyone at some point of life, and it’s for everyone. It is for you, who is also looking for products or solutions even better than what we have nowadays. Design is forever!
This is the first story I publish in Medium. I was encouraged by some people who believe in me and my work as a designer. I’ll try to publish some of these articles based on my design experience later. I appreciate all your feedback and comments because, at the end, we’re all designers in some way.
Please feel free to contact me thru my social networks if you want to share your thoughts or if you just want to have a little chat about design.
