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My path to becoming a designer

I want to kick things off with a little bit about myself to help set the stage for how I plan to use this space.

I am a product designer.

But how did I get here? This question is different for everyone. Some people always knew what they wanted to be growing up, but I didn’t.

Throughout high school I focused on math and science thinking I wanted to go into civil or environmental engineering. Things changed though in my senior year of high school. I had to take a required art class and on a whim decided to take ‘Photo I’.

That decision changed everything.

In that class I learned how to load, shoot and develop a roll of film, but most importantly I was exposed to creativity. Something I hadn’t been in a long time.

And at the core of this blog, I’d say content will be about creativity.

Anyways, I finished high school and was uncertain if engineering was really where I wanted to take my career.

I arrived on the University at Buffalo(UB) campus enrolled in civil engineering courses. I left UB with five different changes in my major and ultimately graduated with a B.S. in Business Administration with a marketing concentration.

What?

How did that even happen? Well a lot things happened in my four years at UB.

In my freshman year I attended my engineering courses and was performing well, but I wasn’t enjoying myself. I was happier wandering around campus with my point-and-shoot camera capturing my perspective of UB’s campus. I really loved photographing the world around me, so I changed my major to Geology.

Keep in mind, I still was doing well in my engineering coursework so Geology felt right because I could work in the field and have my camera. Freshman year finished and I went into summer with a plan to upgrade my photo gear by the start of sophomore year.

I saved my money and bought a DSLR.

When I returned to campus I joined the school newspaper. My first event was the welcome back concert. It was electrifying. One of my photos received the top half of an inside page in the newspaper, in full color.

This was a huge honor for me as I’d never had my work printed, let alone distributed.

A few weeks passed and I had the opportunity to cover a home football game.

My photo made the front page.

I continued to photograph events, making connections around campus. During my 3 semesters with the paper I went from Staff Photographer to Photo Editor and lastly to Senior Photo Editor.

My major also changed 3 times.

I swapped out Geology for Photography, then went into Communication and lastly Business Administration with a marketing concentration.

I ultimately went into business because it was the best option for me to graduate in four years and receive a degree that offered a lot knowledge and career flexibility.

During my remaining three semesters at UB, I took on roles as an intern photographer for UB’s D1 Athletics Department, the house photographer for the UB Center for the Arts and lastly the student assistant photographer for the University as a whole.

My time at UB allowed me to meet and photograph politicians, celebrities and Grammy award-winning artists, travel with sports teams, cover March Madness tournaments for both UB and Syracuse, but most importantly make some really important connections that helped shape my future.

My mentor at UB Athletics taught me priceless photo skills, professionalism and also introduced me to design for the first time. He gave me opportunities to make some simple social media graphics for our teams. We spent countless hours critiquing my graphics and photos. Initially, I thought it was cool how I could make my photos live outside of a photo gallery but I later found how powerful design could be.

I graduated from UB with some ideas of how I could do photography full-time. I continued to work for UB as a freelancer but it just didn’t feel right.

I was looking for more.

I took time to explore the ways I could go after undergrad. I knew event photography wasn’t a long-term solution and I also knew that I wouldn’t feel happy in the business industry.

What I did know was that I wanted to create.

From there I started to learn more about design. I took a bunch of online courses and built up some work on my portfolio and ultimately applied to the Rochester Institute of Technology(RIT) to get an MFA in Visual Communication Design.

To this day I am very grateful for being accepted to RIT. When I applied, I met with the director of the graduate program in person. He let me know it wasn’t going to be an easy program and that compared to other students I was an underdog given my undergraduate experience.

He was absolutely right. I had to work extra hard to make things click. The program director became my mentor and helped me immensely throughout my two years at RIT.

My time at RIT started with me thinking I wanted to do 3D and Motion design. It’s actually the concentration tract I followed for my coursework.

But I was also really interested in creating AR and VR experiences. After the first year, I had the opportunity to work at RIT as a student employee to create a VR experience for fans at our hockey games.

The project allowed me to make a brand, design a fully custom kiosk and build a 3D modeled VR experience. I also started to dabble with AR by creating functional prototypes with target and ground plane recognition.

This job taught me that I didn’t want to do just 3D and motion design.

What I wanted to do was create experiences.

I was able to do everything I wanted. I could plan and build an entire experience and use my motion background for creating unique interactions and prototypes. I could even use my business degree to help find ways to consider all stakeholders in a design.

It took time but that’s how I became a product designer.

This blog will be a reflection of my experiences and interests. I plan to talk about creativity, UX/UI, photography, 3D and motion.

All photos used in this post were taken by me.

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