How did I go from a designer to a developer? In this post, I'll share a little bit of my story, in the hopes that it might help you on your own journey.
Learning Design
First, we have to go way back to 1999.
I always loved astetics and had a good eye for what I believed to be good design, but it wasn't until high school that I learned proper visual design principles.
I was in a special class program where we learned the basics of typography, color theory, spacing and layout - the building blocks of design.
I loved the idea of making something beautiful and functional. Design is based upon principles that can be learned and applied. I loved that aspect of it.
Working as a Designer
Fast forward a couple of years later, I started working as a graphic designer in a local advertising agency. Interactive advertising was the latest rage, the glory days of Flash and I was fascinated by the idea of creating something people could interact with. It was long hours and low pay, but I learned a LOT.
I was lucky to join a small consulting company that did print and interactive work. Being that small meant I had to learn to code my designs. Mini sites, landing pages, emails and newsletters, I did it all.
Becoming an Developer
I kept doing design work as my main job, but I felt something was missing.
I wanted to get a better understanding of what I'm coding, not just copy pasting snippets of jQuery and trying to figure our DOM apis.
A local college started offering a course for web development. I wanted a more formal and structured education, so I signed up.
It was an intence 10 month course where we learned the basics of web development. From HTML and CSS to JavaScript and jQuery.
Angular v1 was the hot new framework at the time and we learned that too.
I knew making the transition from designer to developer would be tough, but I was determined. With the help of my design manager and VP of R&D, we came up with a transition plan and I started as a full time front-end developer 💪.
This is where the pieces began to fall into place for me. The visual aspect of the web felt like the missing link between design and development. I found my place!
Humble Growth
About a year into my first role as a developer, we started using React.
That was the turning point for me. React made sense to me. It's composability modal was a perfect fit for my design background.
It all clicked for me.
This is when I started to grow as a developer.
Understanding the fundamentals led to faster adoption of the next layer of tools and libraries, and finally to understanding and creating my own mini libraries, abstractions and APIs.
The Present
I've now been working with React since 2015.
Since then I've largely been a product engineer, working in health, financial and insurace tech, at small/medium startups and large companies.
I take pride in my work and I'm always looking to improve. I bring my design thinking to the table, and I'm always looking to learn new things and grow both as a developer and as a person.