People of Design,

Lateral Stories exists to share career stories from across the design industry, especially stories of people who came into our field from a different career, or perhaps later in life.

Why is this important?

Design as a field gained a lot of visibility in the last decade. I regularly meet passionate and driven people who want to become designers. Sadly though, they often feel completely lost as to how to begin.

From the outside looking in, it can feel like going to design school is the only way “in”, which by far isn’t the case. Plenty of us switched from other careers or took some more round-about way to making it as designers.

What can YOU do to help?

The more people share their stories here, the better resource this will be for people considering a career in design.

Did you come into design in some lateral way, or perhaps later in life? Did you never go to design school, or switched professions to pursue a career in this field?

If so, please consider sharing your career story through this project!

People from any branch of design are welcome, wherever you are on the art / creative / marketing / content / software / product / interaction / service end of the spectrum, or even beyond. If you have a stake in what a thing will look, feel or work like, you are invited to take part.

How to participate?

It’s simple - just respond using the below form and I’ll get back to you about next steps.

» Share your journey on Lateral Stories

Practically speaking, I’m asking for an hour of your time over a video call, and the permission to publish the chat in a written form on the project website. (You will get to review it before it is published.) I’d also love to include images and links back to your work & socials, if you’d like that, but it will be up to you how much or how little you want to share.

Please share!

Firstly, if you know someone you think would be a great fit, please don’t hesitate to forward this page for their attention!

Otherwise, please share this far and wide to your friends and colleagues — the more people this reaches outside of my network, the better the project will be.

Thanks and speak soon! Zita