Hi everyone! I'm Emisho Victor, and I’m a Product & Creative Designer with four years of professional experience. From a small and quiet town, my childhood was filled with lots of cartoons, fantasy and sci-fi movies, video games and tons of David Attenborough (whom I absolutely LOVEEE btw) documentaries. I guess these are the some of the major things that opened my mind to the endless possibilities the world has to offer, and that also contributed to even where I am today.

When I’m not, and even while I’m still designing, you can still find me ranting & nerding alot over music of various genres (Rock/Metal, OSTs, etc). I also love to talk a great deal about Video Games, Anime, Music Bands, Composers and random stuff.

Discovering myself

Early on, I had a friend who helped me get started with using Coreldraw during class breaks in school. Learning and practicing on school computers, I would go on to abuse this newfound power to make absurd edits like cropping my head and pasting it on an Iron Man outfit, lol. When I eventually moved on to using Photoshop, the edits only got even more ridiculous as I remember making one image of me with wings and a fireball in my hand 😂. Those served as the foundational years for me, and I’d later go on to work as a full-time graphics designer for a small tech firm in 2019. I did the job for 2 months and then realized that I did not want to be a graphics designer, so I quit.

While I was still figuring out what I’d do with my life, I came across the term “UI/Ux Design”. I started reading about it and realized I actually loved this sort of design, and so I gave it a try and here we are 4 years strong. I currently work as the Founding Product Designer at Plumter Inc. Additionally, I also regularly dabble into Creative Web Design/Animation, and share tutorials showcasing my creative process on my YouTube Channel.

Contributing Design to Open source

I found my way to open source when a friend shared a tweet by AceKYD with me, the tweet was a call for designers interested in working on the design for an open source curation platform. At that time, I was unemployed, bored and in need of a fresh challenge, so I took it up.

Working on Made In Nigeria was my first time working or contributing to anything closely related to open source. I saw this as an opportunity at to test my metal against that of other designers while also hoping to learn a thing or two from the work of the finalists. Unfortunately, all that did not eventually happen because I ended up being the finalist so that was kinda ironic.

While working on this project, I had to think alot about how to best present the plethora of projects which would be featured on the site in a clean yet meaningful manner. I also considered ease of navigation, discoverabilty of projects and all that and let these influence my design decisions for the platform.

This was quite the experience and I am always very open to working on more open source projects, so feel free to reach out anytime if you ever are looking for a designer to help out on one. I’m Emisho Victor everywhere on the internet.

Recommendations for other designers

As a general advice to designers out there, I think it's important to explore designing for other spaces other than the usual. Prioritize seeking opportunities for growth and personal development, and offer design help where you can and where the opportunity presents itself, e.g you could offer to help a developer with their portfolio. It’s an avenue for personal growth and development and also a way to sow a seed of goodwill.

This next advice will sound generic, but enjoy the process and fall in love with your craft. It’s what will keep you going on the very hard days.

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