I’m Kasia (pronounced Ka-sha), a name the team definitely had to get their heads around, and I’ve recently joined Fhoke as a Creative Developer. Well, I say recently, it’s taken them six months to get these photos of me, you could say we’ve been busy!
I’ll start by sharing a little about myself. I was born in Krakow the second largest (and oldest) city in Poland and it is in my opinion the prettiest. I moved to England together with my family just over 12 years ago, and when I’m not coding, I love to travel and spend time outside, especially camping.
I’ve always wanted to have a creative role in an agency and decided that going down the graphic design route would help me to achieve that career goal. As a graphic designer, you need to be full of artistic ideas but also have strong computer skills to use the specialised software the job involves. With that goal in mind, and to gain the skills I needed, I began my studies in Graphic Design at the University of Southampton, graduating in 2016.
Switching to coding websites
While I was at university, I took part in a group project where we had to design and build a website. In our team, no one had a clue how to code and because I’m always keen to learn new things I volunteered straight away. I attended coding lectures, armed myself with books, and followed 100’s of tutorials. It was a fascinating project as I had a chance to be creative designing the visuals and then translating them into code and it is where I developed a deep passion for building sites.
In all honesty, I don’t think you could ever get bored of it.
The code sits behind the visual layout of websites, and without it, they would never exist. With coding, there are always many challenges to overcome and new problems to solve. Coding never stops evolving or improving so learning is a daily task in this industry, and that’s what I love most about it. In all honesty, I don’t think you could ever get bored of it.
Straight after graduation, I got a job in a small property management firm where I was designing mostly print work, as well as handling the day-to-day administrative tasks of the office. Although I liked doing all these things, after two years of wearing many hats, I knew it didn’t satisfy my real love for code.
My degree opened up a whole new world of creative possibilities to me, but as a graphic design graduate without any real-world coding experience and just a little knowledge, I had to take the leap and transfer my passion for coding into a career.
Realising my dream role
After that lightbulb moment, 2018 was an exciting year for me. Knowing I had to get my foot in the door of an agency I signed up for new, more advanced online courses to improve my coding skills – an excellent way for anyone to develop. I also spent time looking at the many great websites out there to understand how they introduced animations and transitions, all of the things that excite me.
I sacrificed a lot of sleep and my social life to expand my knowledge, while still working full time, but my motivation to work in an agency drove me.
Finally, I left my old job in September 2018 and entered the development world at Fhoke. The whole team is extremely talented, and it’s been incredible how much they’ve taught me in such a short period. There is still plenty of learning ahead for me so I’m glad that I can learn from the best while working on many exciting projects for clients from around the world.
