How I became a web designer. The way from employee to my own company

I can say for sure that since childhood I had a close connection with art and creation. As a child, I drew a lot. In all the years of school and even at university all my notebooks margins were full of drawings made with a pen (I did this while listening to my teachers in class or when I had boring classes).😁

In the 6^th grade I took the 2^nd place in the County for painting. After finishing school I wanted to go to art college, but because I didn’t have a finished art school, I gave up on this idea. There was also the mentality at the time that art people are poor :)). I was thinking of choosing something more practical and in addition I wanted it to be a specialty related to creation, so I chose – Design and Printing Technologies. At that time, in 2003, it was a relatively young field for Moldova and half of the teachers who taught us were studying with us once, but we also had good teachers.

I was glad that I had many disciplines related to creation. At that time I loved the discipline taught by the dean of the faculty – Theory of composition, which represented graphics drawn with gel pen. During university I had quite a lot of time, so I spent hours drawing graphics and expressing myself to the fullest in those art works.

After graduating University, I got my first job as a cover designer in a local publishing house – Prut International (www.edituraprut.md), the same company where I did my internship. Then I realized that I do not have so much experience and that the theory learned is far from practice. 😅 I was lucky to have many specialists dedicated to the process of editing a book who helped me every time I needed it and I am still grateful for it today.

However, I felt that I was quite limited to just designing covers books. At the same time, the economic crisis of 2008-2009 had come and there was less and less work.

I had to look for another job. I have been invited to an interview by an IT company and I was hired. At that time, Terasoft was developing software, maintaining an online casino, developing games and having Data Entry. Here I started to learn Web Design step by step, designing games such as Slot Machine, Black Jack, but also websites, graphic design and corporate identity.

I can’t say that I’m proud of my first web design work. 😬 It was a challenge for me even if almost the same software was used in web and print design, there were still differences between them, but I learned everything with great enthusiasm.

The company was then, from my point of view, “a school for designers and programmers”. Young people came, gained experience and then left and looked for better paid jobs. Like them, that’s what I did after almost 2 years in the company.

So, I was hired by an IT company – www.ebs-integrator.com. Here I did everything, from corporate identity, logos, to design for websites, landing pages, mobile applications. I worked at this company for an extended period of time- 3 years :). 

In 2015, after 7 years of experience in the field, I decided to become a freelancer, tired of the work space, the schedule, the lack of flexibility. I was rebellious and eager to work on my own. Huh! Freedom! 🥳😃

During this period, while I was freelance, for three years and four months, I collaborated with several companies such as MyVPN, Agile Partners. I also tried freelance sites like – Upwork (hmm .. what can I say .. I guess you know how it is 😅). But, on this site I found a bigger, Australian client, with whom I collaborated for about 2 years.

The Camplify company – www.camplify.com.au enjoys the largest and fastest-growing campervan, motorhome and caravan sharing community. For them I made logo design, promotional materials for exhibitions such as – flayers, brochures, banners, as well as website design, icons design, images for Social Media.

Being passionate about photography, I discovered stock photo sites at the time and I thought it would be nice to make money from it. You can also see more photos in our Store, on the site.

The first period of freelance I worked from home, then I decided to go to a local coworking space – www.tekwill.md and I worked from there until the end of 2018.

For some time, I had the idea to open my design company, so going beyond the freelance stage, I moved to the next level. The opportunity arose to open a company and I did not hesitate to miss this opportunity, so in May 2019 I opened the company Arience Design. I will talk more about the Arience Design brand in another blog post.

That’s about my history from employee to company founder. I hope you enjoyed the article and will continue to follow the future articles and the new works from the Portfolio and Store.

As a conclusion, I can say that everything in my career happened on time.

About the experience of working in companies or directly with customers, my opinion is that it is much easier to work when the work / processes are well organized, when customers have a vague idea about the product / service they offer, so it saves time, works in a pleasant atmosphere and with less waste of time and money.