BuzzFeed published a list of First Things To Happen on the Internet — it's a walk down memory lane for some of us who are old enough to remember a world with out smartphones.
Inspired by this list, I decided to jot down a few of my own firsts, which could also be titled, “How I became a website designer” or “Damn, I feel old.”
1982 – Designed my first document on a computer. I was just a kid writing a school paper, but I remember being pretty excited when I learned how to make the title a larger font and the references italics. My teacher accused me of cheating because she didn't believe I did it myself. It wasn't the last time I found myself half way between flattered and furious.
1983 – Undertook my first major design gig when I joined the newspaper staff in 9th grade. Back then, a page layout involved x-acto knives, letraset, halftones, typesetting, rubber cement and literally cutting and pasting.
1984 – The school newspaper got an Apple computer and I learned Aldus Pagemaker … which eventually grew up to be Adobe InDesign. Desktop publishing was the new fangled term back then.
1987 – My first part-time job as a graphic designer was to clean up scanned machine illustrations pixel by pixel for an automotive company, so they could have a digital library of their parts. Tedius!
1989 – My first “real” corporate job as a graphic designer. I created the artwork and designed the layouts for training manuals. I worked nights… which was necessary because the department didn't have enough computers to go around. I loved working from 3pm til midnight!
1992 – My first (and longest) full time job as a graphic designer and project manager. I spent a lot of time in CorelDraw and Powerpoint in those days.
1999 – Designed and built my first website (for fun). It was hand coded HTML.
2004 – Designed my first website as owner of Surelutions. I used Adobe Dreamweaver, and became extremely proficient at it.
2008 – After researching for months to decide which of the “big 3” content management systems to learn, I settled on WordPress (v2.7) and designed my first CMS website. Looking back, I'm very glad I didn't spend much time learning Drupal or Joomla!
2013 – Awarded Small Business of the Year by the Chelsea Area Chamber of Commerce, in part because I had created the Things To Do In Chelsea website for the community.
2016 – Managing a successful business and full roster of clients with website (WordPress 4.4 these days!) and print design projects (Adobe Illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop), plus adding social media to the mix.
One thing that is both fun and frustrating about being in this field, is that my tools are always changing.