Born
Where it started
I was born in Ilé-Ifẹ̀ in 1998 and lived there for almost twenty years. I went to school there, and my design career started there too.
After secondary school, around 2013 or 2014, I took a computer appreciation class: how to use a computer, Microsoft Word, Excel, the basics. Most people who learnt there went on to open printing shops. My teacher's husband designed posters for print in CorelDRAW, and watching him is what got me curious.
Then I got admitted to a college of education in Ilesha and had to leave. The curiosity came with me. I got my first laptop and started teaching myself CorelDRAW.
OAU
From Ilesha I came back to Ife, to Obafemi Awolowo University. I got a printer and started designing bulletins and flyers for my church and for a new fellowship I had joined.
OAU had seriously good designers then. With all the conferences and programmes on campus, there were posters everywhere, some good, some just okay, and I took them all in.
In 200 level I started meeting other designers and joined a design club called Campace. Ferricool was one of the people behind it. The club ran design sessions at the end of every semester. In December 2016 I stayed on campus instead of going home and learnt Photoshop there; Liz Agboola taught us. That session got me into the club's network, and I started going to its meetups.
Interaction design, and leaving
In 2018 I started learning product and interaction design. The club pushed me there, and so did an article by a fellow sociology student in the US. I was looking for the place where what I studied met what I made.
I taught myself. Internet on campus was cheap: a hundred naira bought about five hours on what we called Intercu. I watched tutorials and downloaded courses. My friend Isaiah Awotide, now at JPMorgan Chase, was learning software engineering at the same time, so we went together. That was in part four.
We finished our final exams on 18 December 2019. I stayed on campus through Christmas and New Year to build my portfolio and work on projects. In January and February I finished my final year project, travelled to Lagos for two interviews, and the second one gave me my first job: in-house designer at an agency.
That is how I left Ife, in 2020.