First of all, Happy New Year! As the new year is here, I am very thankful and humble about what has happened in my personal and professional life in 2022. Throughout the year, I have encountered many events and challenges from where I have learned a lot, and here is a summary of them:
Changing jobs
With the desire to make a change in my career, I started the year 2022 with a new role at a big outsourcing company. Things weren’t the way I expected and it seems that even though I’d asked so many questions I was still not paying enough attention to all the details and shortly I realized that was a bad decision and after two months I quit and look for a new opportunity.
I left the job with many things learned and meet great people in that short time, and I now think that it doesn’t matter how long we are staying in a company and how small or big it is, there are always things that can be learned and we should maximize every learning opportunity.
Currently, I am working at an outsourcing company in Romania, ASSIST Software, dealing with multiple projects and challenges. I believe that the team has great potential to grow and I am happy to get along with them in this journey, trying to learn and fill the gaps that I have as a designer.
Updates on portfolio
Last year I managed to do some small visual updates on my portfolio, changing the theme to a more colorful one but also fixing some bugs and working on the responsive part.
I tried to implement also design tokens/variables which lead to another major update on the portfolio: dark mode. Working now on updating those tokens easily with Style Dictionary, hopefully, will finish that soon.
I do have in plan to have a section for my old portfolio files, from the period I’ve worked as a freelancer. There are many designs that I think are still relevant to these days.
Thoughts section
I did an actual post about this personal challenge where I shortly explain why writing is such an important skill for a designer and especially for me.
Probably this is one of the most important achievements last year, besides the personal ones. I think starting this is the best way to conquer some fears that I have as a designer.
Started a local design community
Together with some friends, we’ve started a design community (just a Facebook group for now) in my town whose scope is to help other designers or people that are looking for this path in their careers. I don’t consider myself the best designer but with what I know there are chances that some people might actually benefit from what I have to share, and also for me to learn from what others have to share.
Final thoughts
2022 was a good year and I am looking forward to seeing what 2023 brings. I have some personal projects that I want to work on this year, continue learning, and improve my knowledge, but most importantly, I want to keep writing thoughts on this section.