I missed last week. I’m hoping that won’t happen again.
I first landed in the editorial room in 2011 and didn’t work with a “structured editorial setting” until 2018. Do note that I had about three years of cumulative breaks before 2018. My major role, in the last nine years, has been a journalist but there’s also the part of me that won’t stop popping up, from time to time.
This is in spite of the fact that I’m not so good with this part of me.
In 2011, I took up an Editorial/Research Assistant job at the first media house I worked with. Few months into the job and I was already in charge of all the graphics designing needs of the company which include the monthly publication. I was practically involved in every part of the newspaper production except for printing. I also worked on a project during this period. Interestingly, I had to learn Adobe InDesign on the job. Before this, I’ve been a CorelDraw guy.
Fast forward to a couple of years later while at RainyLemon as a customer relationship manager. We were working on organising a physical event at a time and before I know it, I was doing some graphics designing for the event. Just as with the previous company, this would be the first time I’d be using Adobe Illustrator. I’m still not good with Illustrator as I mostly use it to edit designs and not create a design from scratch.
In the last two and a half years, my roles at Techpoint Africa include as a journalist (an editor) and data analyst. Fun fact: this is the longest I’ve ever been on a full-time job. Now, I’m asking some questions.
Let’s get back before I drift off. Earlier in the year while working on the Nigerian Startup Funding Report 2019. I was done with my part — analysis — and was some issue with the designing. It was getting late and I ended up taking over the design in a bid to fast track my delivery period while also reducing the frequency of the back-and-forth between myself and the graphic designer.
Fast forward to a couple of weeks later, I started working on the biggest project of my data analysis career so far. Don’t bother guessing about the graphic designing part. It took me a couple of weeks which I ended with a 9-day beast mode. For the beast mode, I stocked up on energy drinks, cereals and milk, and snacks. Titi reminded me about my terrible diet when she saw what I got when I went to the grocery store.
Interestingly, graphics designing is something that allows me to bury myself totally when trying to avoid something. A case in point was a breakup with an ex in 2016 and luckily for me, I just got a book designing project. The project was just the perfect burial ground for my emotions then.
Earlier in the month, I told one of my bosses and another colleague the type of jobs I have done with my graphics designing ability in the past which I’m not so proud of. And the thinking is that it’s probably the reason why I keep trying to bury that part of me.
On another note, I’m thinking of taking up one or two graphic designing apps and master them fully.
Kindly ignore any Grammatical error in there.
theYinkaSanya 