No. 1: New is Nice Always

How I transitioned from fine art to working in tech as a product designer

My Story is Worth Sharing

I’ve had many lovely people encourage me to write and publish my opinions. Recently Scott Berkun, who’s actively writing a book about Why Design is Hard, asked me if I had written about my transition from painting to product design. I promised him I would. This is the beginning. Thank you Scott!

Once a month, I will post a story with a fresh perspective for those curious about design, creativity and tech.

New is Nice Always is my idea of a space committed to inclusion in tech through creative guidance and self-expression.

Product Designers Make More Money

I’m Eva Petersen, a Venezuelan, Miami-based senior product designer with a background in fine art. I hold over a decade of experience making tech more enjoyable through design.

When I got started in tech, there were no UX bootcamps and interaction designers only existed in Silicon Valley. The rest of us where web designers.

By the time I became a full-time UI Designer at a tech company, Tinder had just launched and thanks to AirBnB, every CEO and marketing team wanted to deliver a delightful user experience (UX).

With practice and patience, I got very good at what I do. My expertise and the value I bring to the table is why I get paid. There’s a book called Design is a Job by Mike Monteiro that delves into the value of design in more detail.

Product Designers working in tech make more money than other designers. One of the reasons being that we understand that business goals come first.

Read Scott Berkun’s post Bad Design Makes Money, which challenges the assumption that good design always makes business sense.

From Art to Design

I was born creative. We all are.

Art was the only thing I ever felt confident in while I was growing up. I was painfully shy until I turned twenty.

Before going to art school, I studied at Emory University.

It wasn’t my first choice, but I had been accepted and my dad succinctly told me that in order to survive as an artist I would “have to be like Picasso”. In product teams we’ll usually refer to ideas like wanting to be an artist as not being viable solutions. They’re not viable because they won’t make money.

At Emory I took a lot of research heavy courses and after a while, I got a scholarship to study Historic Preservation at the Savannah College of Art and Design based on a research paper I wrote in high school examining the chaotic urban development of Caracas, where I grew up, and its impact on colonial architecture.

Soon after I enrolled at SCAD, I switched my major to painting and graduated with a degree in Fine Art.

I am persistent.

Being an artist is hard work. It challenges everything and everyone. Art making is also severely underpaid labor.

There are exceptions. A relevant example would be Yayoi Kusama who’s work is incredibly insta worthy and easy to transfer onto Louis Vuitton bags.

For a while, I made a living as curatorial research assistant at Miami Art Museum (now PAMM), but exhibiting my work in galleries that would actually sell it was difficult. In 2007, to get my work included in a show at a gallery in Chelsea, I would have had to sleep with the gallery owner. I did not.

Even if I had gotten representation, galleries take 50% commission from each sale. After a while, I was deeply disillusioned with the art world and I wanted to move on.

I became a designer for the same reason everyone gets a job. I needed to make money. Design is good business and I love it.

I taught myself Photoshop and Illustrator. I got very good at it, but the steep learning curve with all Adobe products constantly left me wondering - who designed this?

Answering this question is what truly compelled me to work in tech. I didn’t know exactly how I would get there, but I was curious about it and it’s what I wanted.

Money and Freedom

When I was 34 years old, my daughter was a toddler and I was planning a divorce. In order to pay rent and private pre-school I had to triple my income. The US does not offer public education to children until they turn 5 years old. It’s also a myth that all women receive alimony and child support.

Working in tech as a product designer gave me freedom.

I’ve been able to live life as man, more or less. I have a type of freedom my mother and every woman before her did not enjoy. As sexist as we hear the tech sector can be, the art world is much worse.

Meanwhile, I get to work with software engineers who can be incredibly creative. Most people who work in tech are makers.

Tech is hard, it’s exhausting, but it pays well and it’s interesting. Always interesting.

I’m an Artist

In hindsight, I understand now why my dad worked so hard. He would leave the house every morning by 6 am, every day, and return late. On weekdays to go to work. On weekends he’d go out to sea on his sailboat to nurture his soul.

Every man on both sides of my family was a sea captain by profession until the mid 1900s. Afterwards everyone went into finance, except for a few outliers, myself included.

My dad never got to see me make a six figure salary or buy a house on my own. He died unexpectedly two months after I turned 35. He would be proud. Even more proud that I started painting again a few months ago, after a decade of not touching a canvas.

I’ll tell you that story in the next post.

With love,
Eva

---