Star Developer Series: Shox Adomokai

Shox Adomokai is a UI/UX designer who graduated from the department of Mechanical Engineering, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife. He shared his story with us in one of our star developer series on slack. He works at reliance infosystems.

Here is his story ->

Hello @channel. My name is Shox and I’m here to share my story about how I got started in design

So when they asked me to share my story about how I got started. I wasn’t sure I had a story to tell especially after following all the awesome stories that came before. Hopefully, I can do it some justice.

Design is different from programming. I’m sure you all know that. So there wasn’t a particular point where I started design per say because design is broad and it’s part of our every day lives.

Picking an outfit to wear, scribbling a doodle while you’re bored in class. These all have elements of design

So to do my story justice. I’m going to split design into a few pieces and talk about how I got into those various niches

So first off to clarify; I do graphics designs, illustrations, UI/UX designer and motions graphics

So mainly, I’m going to talk about graphics design and UI/UX.

I would consider the first time I got into graphics design to be my first year in university. I’d always heard about Photoshop and all the amazing things you could do with it.

I thought this would be a fun tool to play around with. So I got a Photoshop installation file from my neighbour, CS5 I believe and I installed it and I was sooooo excited to use it

But I had no idea how.

There were so many panels, with this tool here and that tool there. I was confused. The best I could do was draw shapes and write text.

So I left it alone and I installed it. But during the ASUU strike, I was talking with my friend about creating a graphic novel (which after so many years is still in progress) and we needed illustrations, cover art etc.

So now I was home, I had unlimited Internet, power supply and so much free time.

So I Googled how to design a cover for a graphic novel and so many tutorials came up. So I picked like 5 and I got to work with them. And this was basically, my learning curve. I didn’t watch any ‘how to use Photoshop’ tutorials until later in life.

I just opened up a specific tutorial and from that tutorial I learned what the tools where, how they worked and the best way to use them.

So fast forward, I was still honing my skills in photoshop and doing small design work for family and friends when I met @tushgeek

And he tried to sell me this idea for a company called Cloudshot. And I was so skeptical, we spoke for hours and I think I lost my voice sef

But if you’ve met @tushgeek then you know he’s a good orator and he finally after 2 days or so succeeded in changing my mind and making me see his vision

So now I wanted to be a part of it but the only thing I could for the company was graphics design but they already had a graphics design guy @user0b100000000 then but they brought me on anyway

So the first task I gave myself was; we need to redesign this logo

I didn’t know anything about logo design then but what I knew was this logo didn’t fit in with the company image that was painted to me. So I wanted to change that

I succeeded in convincing them to change the logo but I could not convince them to accept my logo

So I decided to learn about logo design and colour theory.

What did I do wrong with the logo I designed earlier, what should I have done differently. This was the first time I’d had to ask myself these questions but to me right now, they’re my most important questions.

I ask it about everything; things that I designed, things that other people designed. It doesn’t matter.

So now, I had my first contract graphics design job. I spent a lot of time studying the graphics designs of the other graphics design guy trying to get a feeling for the design philosophy of the company I was now a part of

During all this, I had to start working on making videos and 3D Designs at the request of my oga at the top.

And it was terrible.

I was just entering a state of proficiency with Photoshop. I was just learning that logos should be designed in illustrator etc. And now, I had to create a video.

It took me 2–3 days to make that video. And at the time I was so proud of my work

But I thank God that I’m now in a place where I can look at the video and be ashamed at what I did cause it means I’ve grown now

After that, I tried not to take on anything new. I felt it was better to be good at the things you do than to be average at many things.

So I deleted after effects to remove distractions but my oga did not let me free it. He had many more plans that involved videos.

And when I was done. I deleted again. So I could focus on Photoshop and illustrator this time

And during this time, I played around with different design styles until I found the one for me. I’m a minimalist

So this was important finding my own design style what I was good at.

It helped me to specialise and focus and get really good at this style of design

So fast forward a few months give or take.

And now I had to design a website for my friend’s sister.

I had no experience. She asked me if I could do it and I said sure I can. No problem.

This was when I entered into UI/UX but at the time I didn’t even know the difference between the two

So I started doing some research into websites and how they were structured. What I needed to do

And this is where colour theory, composting and typography are soooo important.

So I got started on the website

And eh luckily she liked it. So that was my first UI gig

It wasn’t until a year or so later

That I encountered the difference between UI and UX

To put it simply, UI is how the end product looks while UX is how the end product feels.

So I had to design an app and decide how it feels.

Most of us are used to seeing the material design template or the iOS designs

But I was discovering that there’s so many ways to design the interaction between elements on an app.

UX is how we get from the log in screen to the dashboard and that’s where your creativity and your mettle as a UX designer starts to show.

Umm do we have any UI/UX guys in the house?

So now here’s a gif showing the transition from the login to the dashboard

So I got into UX which meant a lot of hours spent in After Effects. So I was back to working with after effects and learning a lot about my motion graphics.

My approach to After Effects was different. I download a lot of lynda and digital tutors videos and started watching them.

During this time, I realised that illustrations worked better for the minimal type of design I wanted to do

So at this point in time, I was becoming a motion editor and an illustrator but like I said before. It’s better to focus on one thing so I left after effects for a while because I felt there wasn’t really market for it so I should focus on more market ready skills

And so right now. I’m at the stage in my fledgling career where I’m working daily or every other day with after effects.

So really, my story is not yet over but from what I’ve learnt during my journey and what I’m still learning now. If I have to give any piece of advice it would be this:

1) Take it a step at a time. Become very good at one thing before taking the next step because they all link together

2) Always use the right tools for the right job.

3) Find a community of designers that you can show your work to that can critique you and offer helpful feedback to improve your stuff. (Congrats if you’re here you’ve gotten to this step :slightly_smiling_face: )

4) Polish your skills and sharpen your design eye. Read articles on design, look at winners from design competitions (my favourite), always ask yourself how did they do this and if it were me, how would I do it.

5) In any kind of design, your three best friends are colour theory, layouts/compositing and typography. These three things all have their own rules attached them.

6) This may be confusing after number 5 but rules in design are more guidelines and less commandments. So learn about these things but don’t let them restrict you.
Thanks for reading.

You can reach out to Shox on Twitter azterikcz or you can just shout out his name on slack.

Thank you Shox Adomokai for your awesome story.

From Hamza Bashir, Tinuade Adeleke and Mayomi Ayandiran.

For Consonance Africa.