Photo by Ryoji Iwata on Unsplash
Hi! I'm Daniel and I'm a graphic designer and front-end developer. Also, just started the uncharted path (at least for me), to create my own company; a front-end studio named Overlap.
You may have some questions about this post, and I'll do my best to answer them.
WTF is this guy?
Just another dude sitting in bed (sick tho) with his laptop; same as everyone else.
TL;DR I'm a Colombian graphic designer, that used to work on print and digital projects, but found love in coding and finally moved to another country to become a front-end developer.
Nothing special, really. Another dude with tons of experience working for other people and watching time pass.
"Never to suffer would never to have been blessed."
Edgar A. Poe, Mesmeric Revelation, 1849.
With that quote in mind, I remembered all the nights spent working for other companies (16h was my record, and I'm not proud of it), and realized that I should be spending half of that time trying to build something for myself. In other words, I endured way too much work and got the reward of knowing what I wanted, plus the technical knowledge.
The problem is that I never motivated myself enough to actually do it. Then, two years ago, it came to my son and I had one of those 'parent moments' of fuck it, I should show him that I can do it, and if he wants to do it, he'll do it too! When you have kids, you start thinking slightly ahead of your life span, right?
I still have a full-time job. But, the goal is to start my own thing and be able to set a better future for me and my family.
OK, so what is a front-end studio?
An agency is a place where you can ask for every possible service you can imagine, and they have someone that does it in-house. Now, the studio is the same as the agency, but on a smaller scale; and of course, we don't have that much manpower.
Now, for the front-end part, all my experience is a combination of UI design and front-end development. And I always felt that designers and developers should become a single role or at least work together. But that dream was killed in every company I have worked for. Designers just want to design, and front-end developers just want to code. The problem I found with this approach, is that most of the applications end up using a CSS framework and at the end of the road, they don't look like the initial prototype.
Designers just want to design; and front-end developers just want to code.
My solution
The first thing was to learn from both sides. That way, I'll be able to close that gap as much as possible. But also, learning the potential and limitations of each one made me realize that there was potential for building something with them.
The goal is to create a company that can build any product while merging those together (hence the name Overlap). Designs, UI kits and other beautiful elements; while developing with and then being able to produce build them in the front-end as seamlessly as possible.
Conclusion
The path of creating my own company, it's not something new or crazy; it's my idea of where I see myself transforming all my knowledge and experience into something new. That something new is not clear yet, and probably will not be in some time. But the only way to know if I can come up with something is by trying.
So, let's see what we can build!