On becoming a designer and finding my professional purpose

Before becoming a product designer at Made by Many I had a successful career as a front-end developer. I was a self-taught developer working on interesting projects with a great team, but I wasn’t happy.
At the end of 2016, as I looked back at the last three years I had spent as a developer, I realised that it was time to re-assess which career would help me achieve my potential and make me feel fulfilled.
Finding my calling
I became a web developer because I was interested in technology and how the web was built. I found the web fascinating and being able to contribute to this ecosystem felt incredible.
But the more senior I got, the more frustrated I became. I felt pressured to having to learn new technologies to be employable and be part of the “community”. I wanted developers to pause and reflect on the decisions we were making and how they would affect the future of products we were building. It was a lost battle.
As I grew frustrated with tech, I became interested in user experience and how we could make better products for users. I had always been interested in design, naively thinking at the time that you had to be arty and creative to be a good designer. But as I started working with good designers, I realised that design has little to do with art. I discovered that design is about finding solutions backed up by strong user research.
I remember reading a Massimo Vignelli interview where he made the distinction between art and design:
“Design is not art. Design is utilitarian. Art is useful, but not utilitarian.”
— Massimo Vignelli
These words were like a revelation to me. I realised that I had the right skills to become a designer and create solutions that could be useful and practical. I am a thinker, and my experience as a developer gave me strong problem solving skills.
I started reading frantically about how design applies to different fields (urbanism, architecture…) and discovered that design was everywhere around me. Without knowing it, I was experiencing design on a daily basis. That’s when I understood how positive and life-changing good design can be.
I decided to follow my gut feeling. In December 2016 I gave myself a deadline: I would be a product designer by the end of 2017.
Setting goals and reaching them
I had lots of questions in my mind and no-one to answer them. I knew people who had gone from design to web development, but no-one going in the opposite direction.
How will I become a designer? Where should I start? What should my portfolio look like?
I spent the next few months working on design projects in my spare time, learning UX and design processes as I was designing. I wanted to show my ability to solve problems through design thinking and mainly worked on self-initiated projects to apply what I had learned.
By June 2017, I was ready to interview with a shiny new design portfolio to show my skills.
At the time, a colleague of mine told me that finding my first designer role would be super easy if I wasn’t too picky on the role and company. But I wanted to be picky, because I wanted to start my design career on the right track and be able to learn from the best. I promised myself that I would only apply to companies that have a great reputation for their design work and ethics.
Being selective and reaching for the best
I interviewed with a few well-known London startups and agencies over the summer, but wasn’t convinced any of them were the right place for me.
A few weeks later, I came across a Made by Many job advert for a junior product designer role. I had been following them for a while and knew that they have a great reputation in the industry. I applied the same day.
Interviewing at Made by Many was a great experience and reflects what the company is about. They asked me meaningful and challenging questions and cared about what I had to say. They also cared more about my ability to grow and learn than my professional experience. I met six people from the team and enjoyed every minute of it. The process took about two weeks and I ended up accepting an offer to join the design team.
I wanted to share my story as I think it’s important to remind ourselves that every career path is unique and that non-traditional paths often bring a lot of value to a company. In my case, I don’t regret the years spent in different careers, because they made me who I am: a designer with a unique vision of the world and a unique way to practice my discipline.
Changing career paths is not easy. It requires a lot of effort, strength and self-motivation as no-one but you can make it happen. But if waking up everyday feeling contented with your job is what you’re after, then it’s worth the effort.
