I still was flying as a cabin crew. At the same time, I was looking for a new place where I would make my dream come true. And that dream at 24 was: my work is my passion.
And my passion was designing functional and beautiful things. I was looking for a job as a graphic designer.
I started as an intern (UI designer) at SKDO (in 2011 it had another name, but today guys still rock). A few months later I left my airline and started to work full-time.
No, not full-time.
“Full-time” for most people is like 8 hours a day, five days per week, or something similar. But I am talking about other “full-time”. I am talking about pushing all the boundaries. I invested all my physical and mental energy in this job.
It was my choice, and I wanted even more.
When your work is your passion, you don't think about sleeping or eating. But you think about improving yourself. About making the most incredible things ever made. About making something to impress your teammates. You want to become a rockstar but in your specialisation. And you want recognition.
The next 4 years were a wild time for me in a good sense. In the beginning, I was working on small tasks for graphic designers to gain technical and software skills as I was a newbie. But month by month I was transforming into a kind of multidisciplinary designer, problem solver, and critical thinker still working on most projects as UI/UX designer.
Millions were using the things we made daily.
Imagine that on the way to your office you see a person at a railway station using the interface you designed a month ago. It makes you smile.
I learned a lot. Not only about design as a discipline, but even more. I saw how wild ideas were transforming into perfect unique products.
The influence of the founder (Vadim Skrotsky) and art director (Valery Belozyorov) on me is impossible to describe. After years I know that their bold design philosophy still lives inside me.
It was not a job for me, it was primarily a community. A community of such wild fellas making outlandish projects.
I found my best friends here.
We were applying design thinking practices, implementing the "designers code" approach, recreating tools for the design processes and much more. Fantastic beautiful years of my career life.
Photo credits: @dimabuko (Instagram)