Mentorship

Read this first

How do I get into design without a design degree?

I don't have one. My bachelor's is in public health, and I came in through a two-year web design program at a community college while working. What actually moved things was having finished work to show, not credentials — every job on my resume was won by a portfolio, including the first one. If you're mid-career and switching, the fastest path I know is to do real work for a real constraint, even unpaid or self-assigned, and write up how you made the decisions.

What should go in a portfolio case study?

The decisions, not the deliverables. Anyone can post a final screen. What a hiring manager cannot get anywhere else is why you chose that structure over the two alternatives, what you learned that made you change course, and what you would do differently. If your case study would still make sense with the images removed, it is doing its job.

I'm a student. What matters more, tools or fundamentals?

Fundamentals, but that answer is uselessly abstract on its own. Concretely: tool fluency gets you through a screening exercise and stops mattering about a week into the job, whereas being able to defend a layout decision in a room full of engineers and executives never stops mattering. Learn the tool of the moment quickly and shallowly; learn typography, hierarchy, and how to run a critique slowly and deeply.

How do you move from designer to product management?

In my case it wasn't a leap, it was an accumulation. I kept building the thing behind the thing — design systems, templates, automations — and that work is already product thinking: you're deciding what should be repeatable, for whom, at what cost. If you want the transition, start volunteering for the scoping and prioritisation conversations you're currently being handed the output of.

Can you review my portfolio?

Yes, and the booking link below is the right way to ask. Come with a specific question rather than "any feedback" — the specific version gets you something useful in twenty minutes, and the general version usually produces a list you already knew.