Career Change

From cubicle paper pusher to web designer.....or something similar

[dennyschroeder77-blog]

Another week gone

Another week done in my quest to change careers. I have now started a project that involves all of the User Experience tools I have learned since the beginning of December. The more I learn and apply the tools that I have acquired, the more I enjoy the User Experience side of visual design. Gathering the information from potential users and applying that to determine the content of a website is intriguing to me. I also like planning out what content will be on page and where that content will be on the page. It is like a puzzle with no right answer until you test it. 

This past week has been fun to finally dig my teeth into a project and develop it from start to finish.

[dennyschroeder77-blog]

Job prep

Now that I have wrapped up the fundamentals part of my program I am onto the next step. The next step is starting to narrow down locations and jobs that I am interested in. While this is exciting because I realize I am working my way to a new career, feeling of apprehension and anxiety creep in a little bit. Just a month into this program and I am already thinking about starting a career?When I am looking at the job postings and browsing the requirements and am realizing I need to figure out what what part of the design program I want to focus in on. 

I am leaning more toward Frontend Development or Visual Design, although I am probably more qualified for a UX job because I have a marketing background.

Overall I am feeling much more excited than anxious at this point. That may change when I get no responses from companies I apply to, but that is down the road and the only thing I can do now is work harder.

[dennyschroeder77-blog]

Frontend Frontend

I just finished up my Frontend design fundamentals for Bloc today. I had to design a screen using html and CSS for a public transit app. After two days of hard work and a LOT of research on the internet I finally finished. I learned a ton by just working through this project. I am now a lot more comfortable with html and CSS.  I am sure my coding could be much more streamlined but with my current skills I am pretty happy with the finished product. 

Overall this was the most difficult part of the journey. Having very little experience in coding this past week has been a real test of patience and learning. I will say that I have learned a ton and will get much better through practice and more practice. I now wait approval of my project and a deeper dive into UX.

link to screen: 

dennyjs77.github.io/Front...ge/busybus.html

[dennyschroeder77-blog]

Deep Dive into Coding

Today was my first attempt at using git and Github. It is program where you post your projects (html, css, etc) to the internet so other people can review your work. I felt like I was back in my elementary school days using tab and arrow keys on the Apple 2e to play Oregon Trail.  Needless to say I struggled mightily trying to git push this and git remote that. Although, I hear from my mentor things get easier the more you use git and Github. I sure hope practice makes perfect, or at least competent. This has been by far the most frustrating day of this journey. Hopefully tomorrow will be better!! 

[dennyschroeder77-blog]

Used Figma to create an app prototype. 

[dennyschroeder77-blog]

First logo design......

[dennyschroeder77-blog]

The Next Step

I was very excited to start by designer program, but also a bit apprehensive. Leaving the security of a job and venturing into a field that I was not experienced in was a bit daunting. I found out fast that this was going to be a lot of work but a lot of fun. The first stop of the program was UX (user experience). I went way back in the brain and used some knowledge I had somehow spared a back there for a few assignments. The first WTF moment was when I need to build a prototype paper app. So I jumped right in and starting designing and actually surprising myself at the finished project.

The second part of the program is visual design. I knew this was going to be a whole new ball game because I had very little experience. The biggest hurdle was learning how to design in Figma (similar to Adobe Illustrator). It took me quite a bit of time just to figure out the simple tools I would need to start. As I moved through this part of the program I learn something new everyday about designing in Figma. My favorite part so far was designing a new logo for craigslist. I would have to say it is not great, but for a first time logo design in a new program I didn’t think I did too bad. Overall, there was a lot of really frustrating times in this part of the program. There were times when I wanted to throw the computer across the room, but cooler heads prevailed and assignments were completed :-). So that wraps up the first month recap so I will attempt to keep up posting.

[dennyschroeder77-blog]

Career Change

In November I decided to make a career change. A lot of people do it, right? I decided to quit, which I viewed as a well paying job in the federal government, to pursue a career in web development and visual design. To tell on myself I meant to start this blog last month but life gets in the way sometimes. I decided to join Bloc (an online program) and enter their Designer Track. The Designer Track involves UX/UI, visual design, and fronted-end training. I choose this because I have a degree in marketing which is a good background to go with the program (needless to say I wasn’t using my marketing degree in the federal government). 

I started the program on December 4th, 2017. I chose the full-time program and it is 24 weeks long, so I am due to be done in May, The first section that I dove into was the UX fundamentals. In my next post I will detail my thoughts and feelings throughout the first two weeks of the program.....