Design has been a part of my life many years before it became a career. Explore how everything evolved in the following timeline overview.
My introduction into graphic and web design started while still a kid, in school, around 6th or 7th grade. It started with forum signatures and avatars, and slowly evolved into logo designs, blogs and WordPress based websites.
In high school I discovered the Digital Point forums, where entrepreneurs from all around the world were posting logo design contests for their businesses. That was a turning point for me and what kickstarted my career into logo design.After finishing high school, I continued freelancing - mostly out of passion for design - while still experimenting with different jobs and directions. I was joining contests on both Digital Point and 99Designs.
By now I had already read dozens of articles about logo design and watched a few online courses. There were still very few resources online back then, affordable for starting designers.A few years into freelancing and dozens of finished projects later, I've landed my first full time job as a logo designer in a scandinavian design agency. And it all started with a logo design contest that I've won on Digital Point forums.
This was a big milestone and turning point for me. That's when I've turned my passion into an actual career, doing what I loved on a daily basis... and getting paid for it!Around the end of 2015, beginning of 2016, I've decided to take an advanced graphic design course to fill in some of the gaps. This is what lead me to learn more about mockups, how they worked and the benefits that they brought to a project.
Discovering the value behind mockups made me create dozens of my own, leading to the start of designalot.net - a website where I would share those resources with other creatives.
In the same year I've made my first typeface - Cabo Rounded - using the "Fontself" extension for Adobe Illustrator.
In a couple of years, Design a Lot's resources where downloaded hundreds of thousands of times and gathered over 20.000 newsletter subscribers. And the website is still active today.In 2017 I've noticed that in Romania there was a lack of quality logo design services that were affordable for small and medium sized businesses. So in the summer of the same year I've launched a small design studio - Brand Creators - that would offer professional and minimalistic logo design and visual identity services to Romanian businesses.
By now, I had already delivered more that 500 logo design projects to the Scandinavian market and worldwide, and it seemed like a great opportunity to bring that expertise into my home country.
The design studio opened the paths to evolve more into: creative direction, UX/UI, web design and cross-platform collaboration.What started as solving a challenge for a client, turned into a SaaS project development. So in 2021 we've started setting the grounds for Thermoforming Tech - a SaaS offering tools for CNC layouts and price calculations.
I was in charge of designing the UX/UI of the platform, building the presentation website and managing the relationship with the team of developers.15 years or so, thousands of projects, dozens of websites and a few typefaces later, here we are. I've built my first standalone portfolio, one that is not on platforms like Behance or Dribbble.
The journey so far has thought me that design will always be my passion and that it comes it many forms, be it logo, brand, UX/UI or type design.
If you've reached the end of this section, thank you for taking the time to do so! And feel free to reach out if you want your project to be part of this journey...If you have a project in mind and are looking for a creative partner to bring it to life, feel free to reach out. You can contact me directly using the details below or by filling out the contact form.
bogdan@casota.ro
First, help me understand your challenges by answering a few quick questions. After that, I’ll get back to you ASAP.