a design autobiography…
👩💻
A few key moments in my design history…
2004 - My first Dolly magazine subscription - honestly, peak inspiration. ALL I WANTED as a rural teenager was to work there!
Dolly from 2004.
2010 - At university in Wollongong, studying Creative Arts, I picked up a copy of the black-and-white, newsprint, underground, wild, ugly Tertangala magazine and sent them an email asking if they needed a volunteer designer. Thus began a few crazy years or late nights and media passes, laying out an entire 72-page magazine on my own every 2 months. I used to box up and carry my 27” iMac to and from university!
The majority of the magazine was printed in black with a red spot colour. No consequences, no oversight - total creative freedom. Every page I designed was completely different lol. I had so much fun.
2011 - Before graduating, got my first internship and learned to code, building HTML/CSS websites for local businesses. I present the following for a laugh:
2014 - Working as a graphic designer in the music industry, I applied for a role as a “visual designer” without really knowing what it meant, and found myself in my first role in the tech industry. Then their whole UX team quit, leaving a nice space for me to learn on my feet.
2015 - I became the first design hire in Pivotal Labs Sydney. I learned SO MUCH about lean user research, agile development, consulting, facilitation, and how to build a business.
2016 - My first conference talk ever… at Web Directions Sydney, to a crowd of about 1000. The deck did not work, and I had to stand there on stage for the longest 5 minutes of my whole life while tech support ran up and fixed it 🤦♀️ It turned out well though. I spoke about retrospectives.
2017 - Started my first freelance business. Landed projects at Atlassian, Google, Telstra, and a bunch of startups - from legal services to real estate, crypto to art world NFTs.
2019 - Tempted back into full time work as the Head of Design at :Different. My first time hiring a team - across Australia and Sri Lanka.
2021 - Moved to Amsterdam!
