My Web Designer Journey

To celebrate my website and business being live for a full year I wanted to reintroduce myself to any new comers or anyone else who just found the blog.

Keep reading to learn more about me and my creative journey to become a web designer.

Creative Beginnings

Like a lot of kids I really enjoyed being creative. Did I have the artistic talent? Not really and it didn’t really matter because it was fun!

I was also drawn to all sorts of design even though I didn’t realize that’s what it was called back then.

I loved going to art museums, staring at book covers and finding cool elements in fashion magazines.

From posters to art prints I took it all in not connecting the dots that people made and created these things.

In high school I had many passion projects like writing short stories and creating collages from cut up fashion magazines.

I really enjoyed finding things that didn’t seem like they fit together and somehow making it work.

My room was covered in posters transformed by these random images pieced together to create something new.

Finding a Job

Before going to college, I was encouraged by all the adults I knew to get good grades and major in something where I could easily get a job.

That was the most important thing stressed over and over again, getting a job after graduation. You can imagine how freaked out I was after graduating into a recession in 2010 with full time jobs few and far between.

I was really stressed out because no matter what I did I couldn’t find a full time job. If I could give past Kristen some advice I’d tell her to try out part time, contract or freelance work.

It would have been a little bit easier. At the time I was so focused and determined to work full time and stop working retail that nothing would deter me!

After tons of dead end interviews I finally got a full time job in an office. It was exactly what I wanted and I think the only job on Craigslist that wasn’t a total scam!

The role was very data and research heavy which I love. Getting paid to go down research rabbit holes? Yes, please.

The only problem was after I had learned how to do everything it started to get boring and repetitive. I could do most functions on auto pilot. I really enjoy engaging my brain so this wasn’t ideal for me.

Learning Design

I didn’t want to jump right back into the job market since it had taken so much time and effort to find a full time job. I decided to keep my job and learn some new hobbies and skills on the side.

I started with topics I’d always been interested in but never pursued for one reason or another.

I started looking into design, specifically graphic design, because it had always intrigued me. For some reason I thought if you didn’t know how to draw then you couldn’t do graphic design.

Some graphic design work you do need to have drawing skills like illustration, animation and drawing characters but I was more interested in trying to make those collages I used to make digitally.

This lead me to learn more about Photoshop, join a Meetup group and meet fellow designers.

Web Design Beginnings

I created my first website, a blog, a year or so before learning graphic design and started diving deeper into learning how to edit, redesign and play around with designing websites.

I realized designing websites for fun that maybe I could help other people build their websites.

This was my first inkling that I could design websites as a new side hustle or career. But imposter syndrome and fear stopped me before I could really even get started.

I was so worried about all the unanswered questions like where to find clients that I didn’t even start.

Years later when the pandemic hit in 2020 I had the chance to finally work remote. I considered freelancing on the side then decided I should try to start this web design business while working my full time job.

I’ve officially been posting, creating and helping people for the past year and I’ve learned so much. I’m so excited to keep going and see where my web designer and business journey takes me.

If you’re ready to take tech off your to do list check out my Squarespace templates and web design packages.