How a Mathematics Graduate Became a Full-Time Graphic Designer

My journey from when I joined MoneyTap as an intern to becoming a full-time Designer on the team.

Priyanka Karmakar
Nov 5 · 6 min read

Background

I had always been passionate about art & design and wanted to make a career out of it. But there was a tiny problem — I was pursuing my Masters in Mathematics. Convincing my parents to let me take up Design after graduation was anything but a cakewalk.

However, I didn’t let that discourage me. I used to doodle and sketch a lot in my spare time and started sharing some of my artwork with people. Much to my surprise, I received a lot of appreciation. A bunch of folks even recommended that I research Graphic Design and that’s when my determination became stronger.

The fascinating world of Dribbble and Behance motivated me to start learning Photoshop and Illustrator, so that I too, could create digital art.

I started with the basics first — making flat illustrations, portrait illustrations, logos, and icons. With each try, I was able to hone my skills better. But that wasn’t enough — I needed a mentor.

Overcoming bottlenecks with some jugaad 😎

When I told my parents about my plans to take up Design professionally, they had a typical Indian response — aage kya scope hai? However, I managed to convince them to let me move to Kolkata, as a small town like Golaghat in Assam had little scope for a career in graphic design.

Between keeping my promise to my parents by attending a few classes for civil exams during the days (the jugaad), I spent 6–8 hours everyday hunting others’ work on Pinterest, learning design on Youtube, practising the craft and sharing my work online.

After about 6 months of the above, I decided to apply for an internship and move to Bangalore. It seemed to be an exciting place for designers.

The internship process✍🏻

After applying to 7–8 companies on various portals, I received a call from MoneyTap and two others. I chose MoneyTap for 2 reasons:

  • It was a startup, which meant more challenges & learnings
  • The internship profile and job description were too good to miss

A telephonic interview was scheduled. It covered my education, the different design tools that I had learned, and what I expected to learn. I was also given an assignment which required me to illustrate any 2 features of the MoneyTap app. I shared this with the team along with some other designs that I had created. They liked my work and confirmed my internship in a couple of days. Hurray, I was off to Bangalore!🚀

The first week😵

When I walked into the office on day 1, I had absolutely no clue about what was in store for me. I figured it’d be a bunch of cubicles and people walking around busily. The word ‘finance’ tends to bring out that perception, I guess. But contrary to my perceptions, it was a huge, open-working space with outdoor balcony seating too.

Highlights of my first week⭐️

  • Super-cool orientation: My mentor, Sundaresh Kumar, the Senior Designer of the team, helped me understand not only the scope of work but also the organizational structure and how things worked there. Supportive all the way through.
  • Sync-ups with all the teams: The best part about MoneyTap was that it didn’t matter whether I was an intern, a full-time employee, or only part of the Design team. Everyone made sure I understood all the aspects of how things worked in all departments, be it Operations, Product, Customer Success and even Tech.
  • All-hands introduction: A ritual here is that all the new joinees have to introduce themselves in front of the entire company at the bi-weekly All-Hands. With that, they’ve also got to share a super-embarrassing story about themselves.

One week in and I was already in love with the open culture of the office, the people and how casual everyone was with each other. Also, the biryani-lunches we had as a team.🤤

The Internship🤩

The thing I loved most about my 3-month internship was that I had the freedom to explore and work on a lot of projects. Multi-tasking, working under pressure to meet tight deadlines - these were huge lessons in professionalism and excellence.

This definitely wasn’t a namesake internship, but real work where all the designs I worked on went live.

What was the stuff I worked on?

  • Started with creatives for performance ads
  • Moved on to social media posts, and
  • A super big undertaking of building UI icons and illustrations for the app

There were times when I was intimidated, especially at the beginning. However, my colleagues made sure they were around to constantly guide and help me out.

Apart from this, I learned how when designing for an audience it’s important to understand them and how they perceive visuals (Basic stuff, I know!). Things that made sense and looked nice to me sometimes just backfired as they didn’t work at all. And then the most underrated design would sometimes work! Oh, the learnings. I also learned how to take critical feedback and incorporate them into the next design I made.

All in all, I loved every day of my internship. It didn’t just help me grow as a designer but as an individual helped me overcome many personal and professional obstacles.

The best part?😍

The design team at MoneyTap felt I had added a lot of value as well — this led to another interview for a full-time position as a designer. It was the last week of my internship and I was thinking about what next when I received a surprise. Over the chai break, I was told that MoneyTap had hired a full-time Designer — If you haven’t guessed yet, that was me!

So here I am, a Design newbie who is now a full-time Graphic Designer at MoneyTap.😎

2 learnings I want to share :

  • Don’t be afraid: At whatever point you’re right now, always believe in yourself. That you can prepare for the internship you’re seeking. Don’t be discouraged that you started late or others are more prepared, just start preparing.
  • It’s okay to say no: There’s often a lot of subjectivity involved in creative work. Everyone has their own methodology, but you don’t always have to do it the same way. If there’s something on your mind about an idea, design or way of renditioning even, then speak up.

Thanks for reading. 🙌

The MoneyTap Blog

Everything about our Product, Tech, Design, Marketing and Culture

Priyanka Karmakar

Written by

A human panda. Paints, designs graphics and sleeps. Mostly sleeps. Currently, working as a Graphic Designer @MoneyTapApp

The MoneyTap Blog

Everything about our Product, Tech, Design, Marketing and Culture

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