Navigating my career path - Part 1 (Web Design)
OCR to Web Design
Since 1999
It’s November 1999 almost a month to go for the year 2000 (Remember Y2K). Those are early days of computers - Imagine dial up modems, chunky CPUs, roaring processors, flimsy floppy disks - Amazing days I should say. I usually go to my friend’s home after work to browse the internet and check my emails (even though there are no new emails).
After completing high school I worked as a data entry operator just to be in the computer field. I didn’t have financial support to do college so I was working and attending computer science classes in the evening. In parallel doing a degree through post. I earn and pay for the fees, because I don’t want to create financial burden to my family to pursue my computer dreams.
Whenever I get time after work and classes I hang out at my close friend’s home by browsing through internet and refreshing those empty inboxes. One of those days, surprisingly I got an email from ‘Indus Media’, a startup based in Chennai. I remembered that I applied for a job as scanning technician that I found in a newspaper. That’s my first job application that I sent via email.
That email made my day and I was so happy that I got an interview call. Not just that. I got my first interview call via email.
I am scanning text from the books and magazines and converting them into text and images
Scanning and Photoshop
After the interview, I got selected for the role of ‘Scanning Technician’ at Indus Media. Indus Media was creating an online portal at that time. It’s an era of online portals, and lots of businesses invest in creating one. Those are predominantly news and content websites. As a scanning technician, my job is to scan the newspaper articles and convert them into text (OCR - Optical Character Recognition) and then save the images in a folder. These text and image artifacts will be used by the content creator to add them to the web portal pages. Those web interfaces look beautiful, and I found that there are few designers who create them. I noticed that they use Photoshop. I barely used Photoshop when I was in the data entry job in the printing press. One thing I did during that time was create an India flag in Photoshop and save that image and add it as a screensaver on a Windows machine - Imagine that flying flag as a screensaver. People said that was cool. After that, I saw Photoshop being used here at Indus Media to create websites by designers. I was working in a shift, so after my first shift, I sat with the designers and just observed what they did in Photoshop - It’s truly a magical experience. They just play around with shapes, colors, pen tools, gradients, fonts, and more. They are my good friends and mentors till now.
Photoshop 5 - The tool that I loved and made me a designer. Learned a ton from my mentors that time.
Wallpaper
Photoshop inspired me to stay long hours in the office so I can try out something using that tool to produce something graphical. I create designs every day and put wallpapers everywhere on my computer. Every day, my change of scenery allows my skills to grow in designing in Photoshop.
I didn’t know that many of the people who work there come to my desk every day just to see my wallpaper, while I’m away. One fine day, the boss, who is the CEO of that organization, walked by my desk and noticed the wallpaper. It’s a collage of US President George Washington. He liked it and asked who did this. My friend, who was a 3D animator, told him that Daniel did that work. The boss was super impressed and asked me to come and see him in the office.
Unexpected Job Offer
When I arrived at the office, my boss greeted me and said he liked my work. I was unsure how to respond, so I just thanked him. Then he asked, “Daniel, are you interested in the web designer role?”
I’m just feeling the tears on my eyes as I type this.
I said ‘Yes’!
