Hi and welcome to my blog. If you are reading this, you are awesome no doubt. Don’t think it, you are!
So I am writing this because I have decided to not let my anxiety get the best of me again, and just do whatever I want to do so here. I will like to document my journey as a designer and I will love you to go with me, hopefully the fact that I know people are reading me will give me motivation on some days when I just want to feel invisible.
I have always loved design, didn’t know about UI/UX design but I knew I loved design. Maybe because I am a very artsy person and I love anything arty or creative, maybe not. I remember in 2018 when I started a business, and I had graphic designer friends wanting to make a logo design for me but I said no because I felt like “ahnahn what is in logo design that I cannot do’’ and fair enough, in the year before I gained admission into university, I enrolled in a computer training class where I learnt typing and basic graphics design, even though I didn’t go deep into it, I always felt it was easy and I can do it so I said to myself that all I needed was a laptop and I’d make a logo for myself. Been planning to get a laptop since 19kirridimm but something just always happens once I’m ready so one of those long strikes, when I was bored and tired of staying at home, I read this story of someone who started graphics design with his phone so I followed him and sent him a dm, asking him how, he told me to download PicsArt and start with it and I did, but guys, I can’t even show you the disaster that was the logo I (tried to because I can’t actually say I designed) designed so I just left it and let it go and continue my ‘project get a laptop’ and yet again didn’t work, had to use the money I saved up for other things that came up in my final year in school as money wasn’t forthcoming from home. I remember that at a point, I has 20,000# left which I kept with a friend of mine who I was sure was prudent with money as I don’t consider myself a very prudent person, I called her up to send me the money and she asked if I was sure because I told her not to give me till a particular time but at that time I was really frustrated, and broke so I collected the money and took one of my girls for enjoyment, got food and ice cream and enjoyed myself because even if I can’t buy laptop at least I will eat.
Fast forward to post-uni I had a friend who was encouraging me to go into tech so I was determined I was going into tech but still no laptop, at some point it got really frustrating because I had another friend who also started learning at the time I wanted to start and I could see how far he has come but I was practically doing nothing because I had no laptop. NYSC started and I decided I was going to save my first six months allowance to buy a laptop but again and again something had to happen-my phone stopped working so I had to get another one. Left to me I would rather go phoneless but people were like it doesn’t make sense as even if I bought a laptop id still need a phone and I can actually learn with my phone too so I got a phone and started learning basic HTML/CSS- I actually started with my previous phone but it got to a point that I was frustrated again because I felt like without a laptop to practice well it was still a waste.
Anyway months later I finally got a laptop and by then I was already getting ready to round off NYSC, and I saw these post where they said there was a 3-weeks UI/IX design class, as of then I knew little about it from my developer friends so I thought yass!! I’m doing this and I registered. And I am very glad I did it. Thanks to Cirkle Labs for organizing it.
Well before this, I nearly went crazy during the lockdown so I started learning basic phone graphics design and I did a few designs on my own. I felt telling my friends I wanted to do design was going to be weird as I myself wasn’t sure I wanted to do it because the buzz was all about software development and I felt design was somewhat inferior and I didn’t want to be doing the lesser one when I could simply do the big one like Software Development.
The Cirkle Labs class put things in perspective for me and I decided that yass I was going for UI/UX and one month later, here I am.
I will say I have loved the journey so far, even though at some point I really felt like I dint know anything as we only used the last 1 week to learn figma in the class I enrolled for, and I felt like there was more I wanted to know. Tried to talk to older designers on Twitter but I still wasn’t hearing what I wanted to hear so I was discouraged, because I just wasn’t where I wanted to be. Took a few days off figma totallyf but came back again and enrolled for a UX Couse on Coursera and continued the 30-day challenge I dropped because I didn’t think it was helping me grow. They actually were and these are some of the design I did. I know they aren’t all that but here they are. I hope in a few month time I am able to come back here and be glad with what I see and how far I have come as I plan to keep it updated fro, time to time- if my anxiety doesn’t stop me, and I get totally unmotivated or feel like nobody cares lol
Wow this got longer tha I expected. If you read to this point, thank you so much. I owe you an ice cream bucket!
Xoxo,
Zany.
