A small intro on myself, a graphic designer turned front-end developer

...a Graphic Designer turned Front-end Developer, my journey took me through unexpected turns. Stick around and discover how my experiences shaped me into the developer I am today.

Graphic Design & Freestyle

I was born in Portugal, where I studied Graphic Design at Restart. After graduation, I landed a job as a graphic designer at an awesome Portuguese Hip-Hop Magazine called Freestyle, where I was responsible for the entire layout design. The experience taught me a lot, especially when it came to editorial design skills, and I learned some great tricks of the trade from a highly regarded Portuguese newspaper editor.

Luanda, Angola

Freelancing & Angola

Years later, I moved to Luanda, Angola with my wife, where I initially worked as a freelancer. Although I enjoyed some aspects of freelancing, such as working with starting companies, I ultimately wanted to work for an agency. After some interviews, I joined an Advertising and Marketing agency called FreeMind.

Working at FreeMind was a great experience for me, both professionally and personally. I learned a lot, worked on some great projects, with top-level clients in Angola, and had the opportunity to understand how a different country, culture, values, and markets can affect, breathe and feel advertising and design. It also helped me to appreciate the things we often take for granted in Portugal and other European countries.

I miss the sunny days in Angola, where I had an office right in front of the beach, and the simple smiles of people who, despite their daily struggles, would stop to dance in the street at the sound of music.

Back to Portugal & COVID

Three years later, we returned to Portugal. I had worked for a telecommunications company before moving to Angola, so while I was looking for a Designer job, I decided to rejoin that company and work in Customer Service.

As a designer, I had designed a few websites, and although I was always attracted to the world of web, tech, and development, I avoided learning to code, mostly because of the time I had available, and my mindset at that time. Until Covid...

When Covid hit, I had just been given a promotion to be Training Technician for that telecom company. With training given face to face put on hold during almost the first full year, I was still active doing Training work by updating the manuals and scripts associated, but working from home, which allowed me to take learning Web Development very seriously, and commit to it most of my off-work time. It was also a time that I took to improve my mindset, and to get stronger mentally, which made a huge difference.

Coding photo blurred

Learning to code & Udacity

Imagine learning a new skill while stuck at home due to a pandemic. That's exactly what I did, and it led to a career change that I never could have imagined.

Taking advantage of the fact that we were all stuck at home, I was using most of my off-work time to learn the basics of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. I started using Freecodecamp and watching/following youtube tutorials.

However, the amount of information we have available nowadays is huge, and if you're starting on a new subject, you might find yourself overwhelmed.

Knowing myself, my way of learning required a more constructed and assisted path than what I was getting, so I decided to enroll in a Front End Web Developer nano degree at Udacity.

Every night, when the kids and wife were sleeping, I would be studying for a couple of hours, assisting the video classes, searching and understanding the new concepts talked about in classes, and trying them out.

In about 4 months I finished the course and I was happy with myself, so I started looking for entry-level jobs as a front-end web developer, but the lack of a strong portfolio was becoming evident, and one of the main reasons I was not getting any interviews.

Thames river, The Eye, Big Ben

UK & Clevertouch

Meanwhile, my wife moved to the UK in September 2020, followed by me and the kids in the 2021 summer.

For the last half of 2021, I kept on studying, setting up my portfolio, and re-arranging my GitHub. Finally got my first front-end developer job in January 2022, at Clevertouch, a top-level Martech consultancy company, where I've been working so far.

It has been an incredible experience, learning more and more about web development, at the same time that I work and learn on Marketing, Technology, and Marketing Automation platforms.

My work currently consists of creating and building email and landing page templates for our clients, with some bespoke websites and emails, while also building marketing campaigns using Marketing Automation platforms such as Adobe Marketo or Salesforce Pardot.

Moving countries, cultures, and job positions, made me realize the importance of being adaptable and taking the opportunities that come your way, not taking anything for granted, and always looking to improve your knowledge and skills.

Tiago Costa Rebelo's Blog