Five months ago, I moved to Denver, Colorado, and landed my first full-time product design position at a product agency. I had no previous employment history, no college degree, and no formal education or mentorship. Hell, I didn’t even go to a fancy boot camp or purchase any of those Udemy courses or eBooks. Despite my apparent lack of credentials, I was able to land a high paying design job in an exciting and challenging work environment.

The call that changed my career path

In early 2017 — I was running my Snapchat geofilter design business and doing some freelance graphic design on the side.

I’m not sure that I even knew what product design entailed at that time in my career. I was still teaching myself the basics of graphic design by watching Youtube videos and browsing Dribbble or Behance.

I was confident that I wanted to be a professional graphic designer and make banner designs, logos, and illustrations. However, in just a few months I found myself completely immersed in a new objective — becoming a product designer.

The transition happened when a friend of mine called and asked if I could re-design a website for a client he was consulting for. He said that the client was willing to pay me $800.00 for the website re-design, which was a pretty decent amount of money for me at 20-years-old. At the time, I was making $100 to $200 for quick one-off design gigs and running my on-demand Snapchat geofilter company.

I’d never designed a website for a client before, but I was sure that if I did the job well, then, it would open a new door in my career. I admit — I initially became drawn to this skillset based on the fact that clients were willing to pay much more for an interface designer than a graphic designer. It wasn’t until later that I discovered my passion for the challenging and stimulating work that was involved in creating a dynamic user experience.

I was still junior at graphic design, so a career shift wouldn’t set me back very far. I knew how to use the tools to get the job done, Adobe illustrator at the time, but didn’t have much knowledge on information architecture, layout, hierarchy, CTA placement, responsive design, etc.

When I began the project, I started by reviewing the competitive landscape and drawing inspiration from websites in the same industry. I wasn’t copying designs that I saw, but let’s say I drew a good amount of inspiration from other sites in my client’s industry. I believe this is one of the best ways for me to learn. I never thought I needed to be completely original while learning a new skill; it would be too stressful. Instead, I would gather ideas that I liked and create a cocktail out of them. Later, as I progressed, I would be able to use my learnings and create original work that didn’t rely as much on inspiration.

I spent four days on the design and delivered it to the client; let’s call him Harry. I was nervous but confident that I’d given it my best shot. Harry was happy with my work and paid me the agreed amount. Boom — my first product design job was a success!

This is the finished landing page design.