When I was growing up in Syria at the starting of the 2000s computers wasn’t a common thing in our country, the internet!! oh god! I can still hear the sound of 56 KB dial-up modem ringing in my head after all of these years, anyway I was desperate to get a pc, in 2003 I got one and dude it was a big deal, I got obsessed with games, setting up operating systems, taking the pc apart then re-build it again, and internet, so out of love of my pc I decided to study computer science.
well, college wasn’t what I expected to be but I learned some cool stuff about networking which was my major, some stuff about pc hardware maintenance which I was aware of a lot of it!, but we didn’t have advanced courses and projects to teach me the stuff that I always dreamed of.
In early 2011 the Syrian revolution broke out, and the situation went way down, protesting, people got killed, bombing, and street wars, so I made my mind to leave the country, the destination was Egypt, I started my first job after college as an IT in a small TV channel, It gave me the chance to learn new stuff in a small business environment and how I can deal with the pressure since it has over 40 employees and every day I had a new challenge, 6 months later I quit and I had a new challenge in an aviation services company also as IT specialist, I had a lot of time so I decided to learn photoshop, my cv was the first thing I did on photoshop, It was themed like Facebook interface :), that was cool, I told my self, back then I didn’t give so many thoughts to Graphic design, but I help some people with some stuff on photoshop like making a logo :D, yeah making a logo on photoshop!!
It’s new year’s eve December 2014, my flight arrived in the city like no other city in the world, Istanbul, a crowded cold rainy night in the heart of the city Taksim, so many people around me, a new theme, even the smell was different, I liked the cold weather cuz I haven’t felt any cold since I left Syria. One month later I found a part-time job as IT in a Travel agency in the meantime I was helping this agency with designing some social media posts on photoshop, and searching for a good job in the IT field, after months of searching and getting disappointed I gave up on IT and turned my focus on Graphic design, I kept this part-time job and started alongside with another travel agency as a Graphic designer, It was turning point in my career, I learned a lot about Graphic design since we had a professional marketing team, then I started to get some freelance jobs every once and a while, everything was going perfect I started to learn so fast then I could ever imagine, I was so excited, It wasn’t only Graphic design that I was learning, there was also Digital marketing and WordPress which helped me a lot in learning UI design, so much cool stuff than IT.
After 6 months of working so hard, I got fired, the travel agency was having financial issues so they had to let go of some of their employees and I was one of them, I told myself “hey… let’s try new things”, so I started to work here and there with some travel and real estate agencies, some of them full time some of them freelance, I did a lot of social media stuff designing, printables designing, WordPress designing, I developed myself as much as I could but unfortunately, I missed the most important things in Graphic design, Visual Brand Design, so I took a step back and dug deep into this area, I was reading a lot of articles, watching a lot of videos getting to know the brand strategy, brand heart, messaging, purpose, vision, mission, values, goals, briefs, how colors affect people, design systems, content strategy, and storytelling, then was the big challenge, I got a freelance job for designing a logo, I started with getting the brief from the client, in three days and after a lot of sketching, I made two options but to be honest, I only concentrate on one option and the client liked it a lot, I was so freaking happy about it.
At the beginning of 2020, I was working in a startup real estate agency, alongside Graphic design I was planning the social media content, we were making good progress also we have some clients and made one sell, but too bad Coronavirus hit us too badly and all world started lockdown, we had to stop working temporary and stay home, during lockdown I started a YouTube channel to teach Adobe XD, I started to learn a lot about UX and UI since I have experience in designing WordPress themes on Web page builders.
In late 2020, I started a job as a Digital designer in a real estate agency, which was the best work environment I can ever have, I learned a lot, had fun a lot, oh we laughed a lot, at the same time we did our job perfectly but good things never last, each one of us had his own path now, and I am very proud to know every each one of them.
