The Start of My Design Journey

The first time I opened Photoshop on a touch device, I had no idea I was unlocking a career I just knew I was hooked. There was something almost magical about the direct connection between my fingers and the pixels on screen, manipulating layers and colors in a way that felt both intuitive and impossibly complex.

Those early days were pure experimentation. No formal training, no real understanding of design principles just trial, error, and an obsessive need to create. I'd spend hours manipulating photographs, creating digital art that probably looked terrible in retrospect, but felt groundbreaking to me in the moment. Every new tool I discovered in Photoshop was like finding a secret passage in a game I was determined to master.

What strikes me now, looking back, is how that tactile beginning shaped my entire approach to design. Starting with touch rather than a traditional mouse and keyboard meant I learned design as something physical and instinctive. I wasn't thinking about grids and alignment rules I was feeling my way through composition, learning what looked right before I could articulate why.

This foundation of intuitive design making stayed with me even as I later learned the theory, the terminology, the formal principles. Today, when I'm working on brand identities for commercial real estate clients at Pacific Brand Lab, I still trust that initial gut feeling that sense of what works that I first developed fumbling around in Photoshop with no idea what I was doing.

The lesson? Sometimes the best design education starts with simply diving in and making things, even when you have no idea what you're doing.

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