How I made graphic design as a backend developer...

Hey ho.

Hope you are doing well everyone.

Today I wanna tell you a little "kind of funny" story I had experienced a while ago.

I think it's kind of interesting at least so let's get into it. 😁

A while ago I had the honor to choose an extra lecture during my adventures of getting a Bachelor's degree.

I made my choice on a lecture that focused on startup culture and innovation management, which was at least in my opinion the most interesting one. 😉

Then I layed back, focused on other stuff and forgot about it...

The Lecture

Until one day when my phone began to ring.

An e-mail arrived.

The lecture is getting canceled. 😥

To put it a bit lightly I was pissed.

I spare you of the many German swear words that were dropped at that moment but I think I you get my point. 😂

After a while I began to talk with a friend of mine called Lisa about this topic.

Check her out. 😁

We began to think after a while...

What if we just provide the lecturers which dropped off because of private reasons?

Let's at least try it.

Then we went to work.

We got together with another university professor and made some ads to reel in some lecturers, posted them on LinkedIn and made some noice.

I'm still bazzled about this but this hail mary actually worked. (Don't ask me how...)

We got a nice pair of two lecturers which seemed pretty nice and compentent about this field and I was right in that regard.

The lecture happened. It was pretty good and got a nice grade out of that one.

An overall happy end.

But what does that one have to do with graphic design you may ask?

Well... Let me continue that story a bit further.

After a while me and this ominous friend of mine got together again and talked for a bit. (Who would've thought...)

We began to think... Maybe a present would be nice for the university professor for the help in that lecture.

She was a tiiiny bit more in contact with that other university professor than me. 🤏

Up to that point I was a bit of a third wheel in this story.

Creating some ads

After a while she was like...

Yeah. A present would be nice. But she currently has a bit more problems with getting new lecturers for her courses that she provides.

So help would be a bit more appreciated in that regard.

We began to think and got in touch again with her and she confirmed these thoughts.

Then we were like...

Okay. Let's create some ads then.

But there was a tiny problem from my point of view.

At least with my friend, she had a mostly frontend background and knew how to design something.

But in my case not really.

I'm a bit strange in that regard.

Thoughout my "career" I have dipped my toes into nearly everything CS/IT-related.

I've even read a few books on user interface/web design and other related topics to broaden my range.

My home is the backend though...

So graphic design is a completely new thing for me.

The great thing though...

I have a thing for unconventional ideas and had some ideas for those ads.

So I busted out the ol' reliable paint.NET (yes... laugh at me all you want 😂) and got to work.

The great thing is that those ideas were at least simplistic to design and based on pre-existing UIs that you might know...

So I could base my work on those UIs and add stuff to that basis.

Luckily I made it.

I couldn't really tell you any specific thing from that process that I learned from this that was new but it was really interesting to try out this completely new thing.

(The focus of this story is the way to this point, not really the actual design process anyways...)

Happy End I guess?

I was pretty happy and showed it to my friend first.

She was also pretty happy with them.

So we put those ads from me and her into a cloud storage and send the professor those ads.

The result.

To put it lightly, she was extactic based on the amount of emojis she used in the answer. 😂

And that's the point where we jump to the present time.

After some light general changes based on the information on those ads some of them are ready. (This is at this point a still ongoing process with some other ideas still in the pipeline...)

And then my friend messaged me...

She published your ad! 😮

I was like what??? 🤨

Yeah... One of my ads made it.

I was like... How did I got into this position of making lecturer ads for my university? (Which inspired me to transcribe this story in the first place)

But I was happy.

That wasn't even the end of the story. (It currently isn't anyways since we are still in the process of it... But you get my point hopefully... 😉

Someone on LinkedIn, where this ad was posted even left a comment really liking the graphic.

I was like... Someone even liked that graphic. How the hell did this happen?

And that's where we get to the present day.

I don't really know what will come out of this in the future but right now I'm pretty happy and wanted to tell you all this story of mine up until this point.

Remember... Life always writes up the most interesting of stories and I hope that you found my little one as interesting as me.

Have a nice day.

See ya.