My Journey from Urban Studies Major to Graphic Designer

Mar 5

What do you want to be when you grow up?

“I want to be an architect” I said, not the Art Vanderlay type (Seinfeld Reference), but a real architect. I was always drawing on graph paper and was constantly drawing layouts of homes, businesses, and who knows what from a young age. I had my favorite pencils, rulers, and types of graphic paper. All through high school I loved house plans and even took an AutoCAD class in high school.

Fast forward, to my second year of community college and I take a human geography class. Geography is fascinating. I love maps and geography, but this course challenged my idea of geography in new ways. It wasn’t just the maps I enjoyed, I enjoyed the sections on cultural, social, and urban geography. The study of cities.

Love for the City

If anyone knows me well, they know that I love the city. The diversity, vitality, and busyness of the streets, people, and buildings. I started pursuing that path and enrolled into the Urban Studies program at the University of Washington. It was here that I moved from a math focused to a humanities focused classroom. It was tough at first, reading and writing wasn’t my strong suit. I stayed with it and of course one of the toughest teachers in the program was the one I had the most.

Upon graduation I didn’t have a city planner job lined up and ended up working at a department store for 4 years. What felt like a seasonal job at first turned into a full time job and although it was retail I look back on that job as a success. Not to mention it was a department store in the city. If I really think about it, that was the job that really got me into design, granted it was a different type of design. Working in the city got me restless again and I went back and got a certificate in Geographic Information Systems, the technical side of planning, and thought that would help me get a job in the planning industry. I kept up my skills after the program and continued to look for GIS jobs around the area.

Startup Life

I stumbled upon a small tech startup that created digital maps for product location services. It was here that I was introduced to not only the tech industry, but also Adobe Illustrator. They used this software to create the maps as SVGs for the engineers to embed into the app with product location data (I didn’t always understand the technical side), but I enjoyed using Illustrator.

The next thing you know I am using Illustrator and Photoshop more and more. Starting with creating graphics for my church and for fun. I started following different designers on Instagram and got involved in design Facebook groups. It was these groups that got me to expand my skills through design challenges and courses. The more I learned the deeper down the design rabbit hole I went. I started to grow more comfortable in Photoshop and Illustrator and wanted to learn motion graphics.

Now, motion is just a different animal when it comes to design. After Effects looked scary so I downloaded Apple’s own Motion software. It was easier, but in the end I wanted to animate my vector graphics and it didn't exactly play well with Illustrator files. So After Effects it was. Now I love After Effects, and even though I am not as advanced as the first two applications, it’s still fun to make a motion graphics or animations from scratch here and there. Now if I only had a more powerful computer to make 3D animations.

Continuing to Learn

Today I am still growing as a designer and have been really active in church communications and creating social media graphics and posters for local churches. I started a seperate design account on Instagram and have continued to curate my website with a diverse portfolio of work. Maybe someday I will do this full time. In the meantime I will continue to work with who I have on a part time basis and continue to learn and grow as a designer.

Some of the YouTube channels that got me started with tutorials and inspiration...

Peter Mckinnon | Nathaniel Dodson | Joe Cavazos | Sonduck Film

Some of my favorite Instagram Designers…

Joshua Heath