My design career.
In 2001 I graduated from the University of Pretoria after completing my honours degree in design (BA Fine Arts Information Design). During my final year I started my first job which was an apprenticeship at South African History Online, a local history and cultural studies NGO. I learned the art of narrative from my boss Omar Badsha (a well known South African photographer and struggle activist), designed our website and worked with the Department of Education to produce printed, online and interactive history learning material and helped lay out several photographic books.
In 2005 I won the Oppikoppi design competition and was commissioned to create the corporate identity and all the print and online collateral for the annual music festival. Inspired by this success myself and a partner formed The Born Kreative - a small and dynamic design company whose work spanned print and digital media (above and below the line), graphic design, storyboarding, animation, multimedia, web and interactive. We produced viral videos to market ourselves and became the primary digital supplier for VWV Massive, winning accounts like Rand Merchant Bank and Telkom. We achieved great success but after 4 years I was burned out and after visiting beautiful Cape Town for Design Indaba I decided to relocate here.
Before moving I secured a job as the website designer for RamsayMedia’s Automotive cluster. I worked there for 4 years, designing and developing mobile apps, interactive games and online advertising material. I also conceptualised and created video content and motion graphics for digital presentations. I’ve been in Cape Town since exploring new opportunities to grow my skillset. I’ve worked for 24.com (where I designed the 2014 South African national elections website, the FIFA World Cup 2010 microsite and learned agile methodology, including leading sprint planning sessions and reporting to product owners), DStv (where I learned to run design workshops) and Immersion UX (where I won us Old Mutual as a client through my client liaison and UX/UI design efforts).
In September 2017 I was approached by Liquorice ad agency to join their on-site Sanlam design team where I worked closely with Jack Kruger in servicing the UX and UI design needs of various business units at Sanlam. My responsibilities included ownership of the Sanlam Reality app, the design of the Go Cover app and the conceptualisation and design of several new mobile app projects and also the improvement of all Sanlam web/online properties.
In 2019 I joined Prodigy Finance to contribute to their vision of democratising tertiary education and enjoyed this job immensely. When the company restructured in 2022, I felt the need to seek out a new challenge and landed at Bluegrass, where I am the lead designer and work closely with stakeholders, run workshops and deliver intuitive and engaging customer experiences via conversion-focused interfaces.
My working style
I am highly collaborative and my stand out strength is gathering information from stakeholders and using that to drive design solutions that engage and delight. I like to take time to immerse myself in the problem space before ideating, Access to customers and analytics is ideal.
Knowledge gathering is followed by a divergent thinking phase. This usually encompasses collaborative product discovery and jobs to be done workshops, sketching and storyboarding (I am a competent illustrator), lo-fi prototyping and early user validation.
Next is when I spin up high fidelity designs in Figma, Penpot or the design tool of choice. Form follows function in my world and I prefer to use known methodologies and best practice to facilitate understanding. Once UI communicates the basics I finesse for tone and style.
I love typography and all forms of visual communication (including the visual and performing arts).
I am happiest when working on something meaningful and helping to achieve social impact. I'm excited about things like AI, the IOT and the interfaceless interface.
My management style
I enjoy contributing in a dynamic team with other passionate people. I am comfortable in a design mentorship role, have a lot of patience and know how to get the best out of a designer and a team of creatives.
