There’s an episode in my life that I vividly remember. I must have been around 7 years old. I traveled from my small hometown (Bani) to Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic. The lights, the traffic, the big avenues, the big billboards… everything caught my attention. That’s where my love for design, communication, urbanism, and architecture was born.
I remember playing in my house’s backyard, "constructing" cities and highways using dust and wooden bridges to play with my small Hot Wheels cars. Later on, I started designing, drawing and painting 80’s cartoons-inspired robots on pieces of corrugated fiberboards, I would later collect them in old cracker boxes.
After graduating from high school, I decided to pursue my passion: I traveled to the Dominican Republic from NYC to study architecture. In a period of three years, I learned about great architects and their works, and more importantly, I learned the process of designing spaces for humans’ needs and scale by designing the blueprint and models of various projects (Public library, discotheques, modeling agencies), producing all the necessary spaces, studying their dimensions in relationship with the users, and how they will move or interact with the building once inside. Sadly, I could not finish the degree since I had to come back to the United States due to family reasons.
At this point in my life I had to decide: Continue studying architecture or switch careers? Completing my degree in a university was out of reach because of the tuition cost. But "when there’s a will, there’s always a way". Architect Frank Lloyd Wright once said: “The mother art is architecture”. Well, I was happy then to hang out with one of its offsprings: I enrolled in college to study graphic design, and by studying typography, photography, and illustration, it all reaffirmed my belief that design was my passion.
Is a form of self-expression, but also a way to communicate ideas to others and solve their problems. No matter in what field design is being used, it always connects and serves human needs in ways that matter, all arising from the designer's ideas and profound interest of said humans.
During my years practicing graphic design, I thoroughly enjoyed designing layouts, logos, and branding, I even learned to code websites, but my curiosity for all creative things let me discover UX, which is a field that encompasses so much following an orderly process: Research, design, and caring deeply for the user’s needs. The more I read about this field, the more I realized that UX can help me grow and expand my passion for design and all together, visual communication.
Just as I was inspired as a kid by visual arts, I want to inspire and influence others, either by solving their communications problems through a user-centered approach or by directly helping others appreciate or discover their own passion.
Thanks for reading!