The Career Change Journey: How I Transitioned from Visual Designer to Product Designer in the Design System Team

Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher, is quoted as saying, “change is the only constant in life.” And I can only agree. Initially, this article was supposed to be a short LinkedIn note, but then I started writing. So here it is, personal thoughts about the change.

Ok, one more thing — if you came here to read about significant life-breaking changes, about quitting a corporation and becoming a shepherd in a small village — it’s not the case. In this article, I will try to summarize what happened in my design career over the last year or two.

You may already know I was a Visual Designer in the Design System team. My daily work was evolving, so Brainly Design was too. In the beginning, I was assigned different tasks, like maintaining design system libraries, researching components, testing new tools, creating guidelines, designing and conducting workshops, social media templates, and so on. Later, as our team grew, new possibilities appeared. We hired many talented designers to develop Brainly in the field of marketing, brand, and motion design. And it was the moment of my very first enlightenment — “I want to become a brand designer.” But not the “logo maker.” I wanted to guide people through the vision and mission, incorporate strategy and brand personality into the product and help in brand evolution (it was at this time that Brainly began a collaboration with the Red Antler agency.) They say you’ll never know if you don’t try — so I put all my focus on brand education. I completed many online courses and learnings and finished the Sztuka Projektowania (a well-known design course in Poland).

In the meantime, two things happened. Kay Kłos joined Brainly as Sr Brand Designer, and Michał Skowronek started his work on the Figma Dreams plugin. What a plot twist, hm?

Pencil — Brainly’s Design System — is the source of truth for all Brainly teams, and it consists of the knowledge of three main fields — Brand, Product, and Marketing design. I grew up to be an independent Brand Designer under the supervision of Kay and my manager Patrycja Rozmus. As a Brand Designer, you spend a lot of time visualizing and creating new and exciting brand assets such as logos and icons. You are responsible for ensuring that the brand is consistent across all digital channels. You work closely with the Marketing and Product Teams. As a Brand Designer, you are an ambassador and educator. Together with my team, I worked on projects related to Brand Evolution, developed new guidelines and brand assets, created a company presentation template, designed a system of school subjects iconography, and, what I am most proud of, created full guidelines for creating merchandise.

However, in the meantime, I was still working on my daily basic tasks — I was supporting product teams, collaborating with our developers, and what was the most challenging was maintaining all the Design System Figma libraries. And to top it all off, we were introducing a new buttons system into our product. The export of buttons from our Style Guide to Figma was supposed to be a milestone for the plugin created by Michał. Therefore, with Michał, we spent hours or days talking, analyzing, and making the transition process. We created guidelines, invented different applications and use cases, provoked errors, and tried to anticipate everything that could go wrong. We made copies of our libraries to test them so all teams using the Pencil libraries could adopt the update seamlessly. And the big day came. We had the setup, the migration guide, and the tutorial video — all to minimize the risk of errors and support all the designers. I clicked merge the branch and publish, then updated the “higher” library and… I noticed that we had a bug that could break all buttons in team files. (I promise I will write a proper article about how our libraries work and what our update process looks like). But here, I’m sure you can only imagine how stressful it was for all of us. We organized a meeting to fix this problem fast and minimize losses. Long story short — with intense and fast problem-solving and a quick pivot, we managed to save the day.

What are the learnings from this story? First, Stockholm Syndrome exists, and second, innovation takes time. But also , I learned that I like challenges. I like digging into the unknown. And when the Design System team opened a position for a Product Designer , I already knew my path. I’m still in love with brand governance, of course, but I also like shifting the process and thinking about guidelines and information architecture. Even in my Gallup strengths list, I have systematic thinking in a very high position.

My career transition journey was not without its challenges, but I worked hard and had a supportive network of friends, colleagues and my mentor, Patrycja. I didn’t plan for this change. It was completely organic.

Here are some of the things that I wish I had known when I was transitioning from Visual to Product Design:

• Define your strengths. When transitioning from one design job to another, it can be easy to feel like you need to be good at everything. However, that’s not realistic or sustainable. You need to be able to prioritize what you’re able to do with your time and energy. When defining your strengths, start by listing the design skills you’re most comfortable with. You can also ask your mentors and colleagues for advice on where you can improve. Then compare it with the scope of different roles.
• Identify areas of improvement . In addition to defining your strengths, you’ll also want to identify the areas where you need to improve. You don’t need to be perfect to succeed at your job. However, you must be honest with yourself about the areas you need to work on. Assess what is needed for different roles and reflect on your readiness to up-skilling and motivation.
• Explore design tools and resources . Different disciplines use different design tools, and you’ll want to familiarize yourself with the design tools that your new role uses. You’ll also want to familiarize yourself with the available design resources to help you become a better designer.
• Follow your passion and keep improving. If you follow your passion, you increase the likelihood that it will lead to success. And even if it doesn’t, at least you know you tried.