Question to Kevin

Thanks man, I'm a pretty normal guy I feel, but I'll share more. I'll have to hit you up later, when it's a bit better time for me. Later tonight, like in about 8 hours or so.

Hey Konrad, welcome, I see you got your mod stripes.

I'm flattered, it's funny because I feel like I still have so much to learn, and I do.

So the skinny on me. I'm 28 years old, I didn't write my first line of code until I was 25 years old. I graduated from a 4 year university with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Interdisciplinary design. I graduated in 2011, after I had taken 2 years off of school in the middle to play hockey.

Through school I studied a bit on graphic, but my focus was on product and industrial design. I built product prototypes, which you'll see on my portfolio below. Built furniture on the side. And was huge into sustainability, and user experience. I also did a huge amount of 3D modeling, still do actually. I was offered by the university I graduated from to teach their 3d modeling software class, but had already decided to move away before they offered that.

Fast forward, the year after I graduated, I was working for AmeriCorps, and the job site I worked for asked me about doing a Wordpress site for them during the summer months of 2012. I though sure, never built a site before, but I love learning, love design, and love challenges, so I took it on.

I was so ignorant I still remember I first though the header of the site, the part that often repeats among all pages, went in the head section of the document. I had a hard crash course, but was able to piece together a wordpress template. I have no idea how, but I figured it out. That site is no longer online, but I was hooked. It was something I wasn't good at, so even after I continued to read blogs, and try to learn more. In my quest for knowledge, I found Treehouse and signed up in 2013, and I've been here since.

I saw web design as a way to promote my product design work, which honestly is where my true heart lies, but web is fun because you can literally affect millions of people with a new web technology, and it has a low cost of entry. So now I build digital products is how I see it. When I started treehouse, I went back to basics with HTML, CSS, and JS, than wordpress, now I'm into Ruby.

So I have a portfolio here: http://kevinkorte.com/

It's meh, but whatever, it needs a re-work but isn't a priority. I'll do it one of these days.

The project that has all of my time right now is here: http://aqueous-beyond-5330.herokuapp.com/

Now, it doesn't look like much right now, but everything I'm doing is behind the scenes. It has a custom CMS. It's eventally going to have a lot of data in it, but none of the data will be duplicated, which is the biggest challenge I've overcome on this site. Views are generated by data relationally tied together. Here is the git repo for that site on Heroku if you are curious: https://github.com/kevinkorte/mcs-3

One day that site will have a proper domain and I'll start to market it, but as you can see, I have some work to do right now.

How's that? Stick with it and you'll be good!

There are two storied about the MOD, i cant tell it here, apart from priv but yeah, i did get a email like a week ago xD didnt really expect to recieve the email from treehouse , was suprized . But thats cool, finally i can edit people code when they use the

Some code

Wrong : p

Wow, your the age of Nick :D

How did you find the learning in Uni? what im comparing is if we compare programming here at treehouses to college or uni , not the bect uni, like Oxford or Cambridge but the not as popular , is that they code is bad or they dont know it, basically you wont learn anything. They might just show you a path, but im already in the path and im not at Uni .

So when did you start design and modeling?

When i first time put my hands in code was in 2014 April i think it was 2014 . I had a nice teacher that gaved me access to lynda.com so i sat there, too sad the tutorials were from 2002... so then i saw this AD on yt , and did research about treehouse on yt, and saw people who shown me what they created , and there was this link for one monht free, so i took it and asked my mum , and in summer i got access and i started with basics, i still remember last year 2014 summer very very well how things were going .

After few monht, i stopped using treehouse for like 4 months or so , and in februaty 2015 i came again and i got more independent. I really hated treehouse before even tho it has the best content because of the forum that posted answers or any request that i wanted without giving explanation and i just copy the code and so on.. i didnt learn anything. What a waste of time!

So in february i came again, and i was super happy because it made me independeed and better at it, so now i can use treehouse as i like .

Meanwhile it took me two years to understand how to code or how to learn. I started when i was 16.5 now im 18.5, and cant do much anyways.. ud probably can see in forum : p i never aplied etc..

Now its better.

It started when i was 14 as my mum wanted to have a shop online. But i had a bad group of people i hanged out , or rather fake? and so on.. and i realised when i was 16.. and i dramaticaly changed then till today. Now i have everything , all the knowledge to succeed and have my dream life. I may not know e.g. Rails, but i know how to learn it etc..

So you are web designer first? :D heh i allways saw you as this guru with all the programming languages that knows them fluently and allways pop up in forum and gives the perfect answer with perfect description .

But i see you are a designer first :D

Your portfolio has a unique style . I like it, im trying to come up with some unique style as well. Its super hard without coping half of the layout from other sites : p

Im looking forward to see what you will do , and when things start to work and the day you change your portfolio :D

What advice would you give for someone that doesnt want to focus on desing 100%, but rahter do it, so i could make some nice effect for my website and you know these parallex webistes, they have this clean desgin, ud say to go into illustrator and use pen-tool? what about color-theory?

How many hours do you spend learning? I believe you are super determinated .

Could i ask, where do you see your self in 5-10 years with what you are doing?

This answer from you is very motivational as well. Plus that it took you 3 years : p i know , its not about time but on how somebody is determinated and focused, but i mean, 3 years isnt much , i think.

Im definitely going to stick with one now , and planned my self or disciplined so i can ahcieve it my summer . Well, my last summer where i will be teen, so i really want to do a lot before im in 20s.

Its very interesting. Think treehouse should add something like a question when did you start to code, how old are you now xD thats motivational too :D + can learn better about the person.

Did my age surprise you? Older than you though?

For what I did, my experience at the uni was great. But I had a professor that was my main professor who gave a crap. I had some bad experiences too with some professors who forgot what there job was. I'm not proud of it, but me and a few students wrote formal complaints to the dean and ended up getting our professor "relieved" of her duties....aka fired, because she was consistently late, she didn't follow the syllabus and ended up teaching things I had not interest, nor where what the class was suppose to be related to. I also think you get out of the uni what you put in.

Not everyone should go to college though. And in the web world, I don't think it's super important. What you can do is important, where you learned to do what you do....isn't. Uni's are very expensive, and so in some cases it's not worth the cost. A lot of variables here, but if you're considering it, vet the uni hard before you give them a dime, and if you do, go all in. Put in the effort to get your money out of it.

I was 14 when I first officially starting design and modeling, and that was as a sophomore in highschool. I took some drafting and modeling classes than. I specifically went to that high school for those classes, as I was out of district at that school, but it was the only high school in my area offering those specialized classes. But even before than, I loved design and modeling. I loved legos, and would build crazy custom things. A drew all the time. I took things apart to see how they work, and built things out of the parts. I've done that since I can remember.

All you gotta do is keep at it. It's a bit ebb and flow, like life. It's important not to give up when things are going exactly as you want.

As far as being good at design, without dedication yourself to design. Learn the fundamentals of the basic principals of design. Like color theory, visual weight, white space, typography, etc. You don't have to master these, but know they exist. Follow Dieter Rams principals : https://www.vitsoe.com/us/about/good-design

Some good exercises you put yourself through is to do fake designs around un-relatable objects. I'm looking at a stapler, so try building a website showcasing how great a stapler is. It forces you to start thinking for yourself, because you won't find another website to "copy", but you'll find design ideas from other similar products and site, and from the stapler itself you'll implement into a website. Not you're using your design thinking skills!

I probably spend 30 hours a week on Treehouse and various learning tools. I work about 50 hours a week as well, plus I weight lift, so as you can probably guess, I don't have much time for anything else...haha, but I love the lifestyle.

In 5-10 years....hopefully owning my own studio. In the process now, lining up 3 clients, which will hopefully launch myself. I want to build a creative studio. Have stupid fun stuff like nerf guns, slides, etc so it's a very playful and fun atmosphere. How cool would that be to work in a place that plays all day. That's my goal.

Honestly, 3 years has gone by in the blink of an eye, it still feels like I started this 8 months ago, honestly. If you're like me, you'll hit a tipping point where things start clicking so well, it gets really fun, cause now you can really do stuff. It goes from super frustrating to really awesome fast. Stick with it!!