Design for a good cause

How one designer used his success with Envato to dedicate more time to a charity he loves

Robi Wahyudi is passionate about education. So passionate in fact that the Indonesian native dedicates most of his free time to designing a platform that provides free education to students around Indonesia.

Identifying your passion

“There are many gaps in the education system in my country. Mejakita is a free education platform that’s designed to help students close some of those gaps.”

Robi, who goes by the name TMint in the design community, didn’t always have time to dedicate to projects he cares about. Throughout most of his time at university, he was kept busy balancing his studies with part-time work.

But it was that very part-time work that introduced him to the world of design and taught him about UI/UX and how to work as a front-end developer.

“Personally design for me is about communication. You want to make your customer happy with your product but you also need to speak to the user, to have an impact.”

The design path

After graduating from university and leaving his job, Robi continued to educate himself about design by becoming an active member of the design community in his area and by frequently taking courses to update his skills.

Soon he began to sell his work on Envato Market, and before he knew it he was supporting himself as a designer.

Robi believes the secret of his success lies in forgoing the overcrowded and competitive field of WordPress theme creation for the smaller and less competitive niche of Tumblr themes.

“Based on statistics, Tumblr is now populated with more than 145 billion posts, over 44 million per day and many top brands used it. There a lot of demand for new and fresh themes so designing in this area has really worked for me.”

Doing the work

Robi’s success has allowed him to dedicate more of his time to working on his passion project, Mejakita, which has already attracted students from all across Indonesia.

“If I weren’t a designer I’d be a teacher. I have a real concern about education in my country and Mejakita is giving me the opportunity to do something about it.”

See more of Robi’s work at Envato Elements.