So today I thought I’d share my origin story and my semi-unconventional route on how I became a web designer. But before I start, if you’re reading this and are interested in becoming a web designer or designer of any sort – please note that your path may look completely different than mine and that’s completely okay. Everyone has their way and you just need to enjoy the road and if you love design (or whatever) then go after it.

First things first, I did not study design in college. I actually studied business administration with an emphasis in entrepreneurship. Honestly, I loved every minute of it, would not change a thing + really believe that it’s given me an edge when it comes to designing for businesses. However, even though I didn’t study design, I was always semi obsessed with it growing up. All my school presentations were always well designed, I loved playing with clip art (anyone remember that?!), power point templates + trying to create cool visuals to hopefully impress my teachers. Most times, it worked! 

During the summer of junior year in college, I ended up taking a marketing internship at a recruiting company. This was by far my favorite internship I did in college (in addition to my experience interning at a local flower shop) and this internship was were I designed my first website. Now, funny enough, my boss was trying to create a marketing department, which was pretty much ended up just being me. They wanted to create to ‘sub companies’ to support + funnel in more business. I was in charge of marketing and then building/re-building the existing website(s). What I really appreciated about this opportunity was the fact that I was very open about not knowing what I was doing but also very willing to learn and figure it out – and to this Fortune 5000 company, that was enough. 

At the time, the site was built on a webplatform called 1and1 (now called Ionos). It was a drag and drop builder and after playing around, experimenting + a ton of hours, I built 2 websites. Not only that, but I designing the logos as well, this time using Microsoft Word. Totally not industry standard but I will say, I still think they look pretty damn good (all things considered). 

Afterwards, I built my own website on the same platform (Since it only cost $1 for the year!! Yeah, unbelievable!) and kept taking other internship opportunities and learning different design programs. 

When I graduated college back in 2015, I discovered this online entrepreneurship world and that people were making money building websites. To me, it was exciting and it felt like a better long term opportunity than getting a traditional job. I wanted to start a business and marketing + website building skills were what I had to offer. 

Since then it’s been a whirlwind of a journey and every day I keep learning new tools, new skills, new everything. (Real talk, I do wonder + ask myself why I did this to myself because it is way harder than I ever thought, but I also wouldn’t change it for the world.)

So that is how I became a web designer + started my design studio. Again, semi-unconventional and probably a completely different journey than yours. One thing I’d love to leave you with is to enjoy, be thankful + do your best to postively reflect on your journey to where you are. It can make a big difference in how you move forward! 

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