From Journalist to Web Designer: How I Built Applet Studio

BusinessWeb Design

Aug 21

My career change story, from a newsroom in Ukraine to a Squarespace template shop

How do you become a web designer? I want to share my story: how I transitioned from a career in journalism to being a web designer and agency owner.

If we haven't met, my name is Olga Kolgusheva. I run Applet Studio, a Squarespace template shop and design agency, and we're a Squarespace Platinum Circle Partner. I started this business in 2020. I tried to launch it in 2018, but it took me two years to get the momentum going and to start really getting clients and consistent revenue.

So here is my story.

Starting Out in Journalism at 19

I was a journalist in Ukraine between 2008 and 2012.

I started at 19. My first editorial job was at a daily newspaper, and I was still a university student at the time. But I was so hungry for work, so determined to prove myself, that as a third-year student I took it on full-time. I switched to a different form of education, and it took me longer to finish my bachelor's degree than I originally planned.

Over those four years, I moved through a few different roles. Radio was one of them: I spent several years at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. I also worked as a business journalist, writing for newspapers and websites and covering a lot of stories along the way. The entrepreneurial mindset I have now, I think I actually got from my work in journalism.

Moving to the United States

In 2012, I moved to the United States with my husband. He enrolled at university, and I was at home; eventually, I thought I should go back to school too. So I got myself into a master's program.

It wasn't easy. When you're from abroad and you don't have any connections or any money, nothing is easy. Those were three really interesting years in our lives. I had a lot of jobs in between semesters. Hustle, hustle, and hustle.

What Journalism Actually Teaches You

When you're a journalist, the nature of the work is that you hustle. You bring a story to an editor, and you pitch it, and not all of your pitches get picked. So you learn to pitch more stories than you could ever write.

Some of them get approved, and then you get to talk to people. Finding sources means calling a lot of people you don't know, which is a great skill I use a lot right now.

And the story that you file, there's no guarantee it's going to be published. The work is really stressful. Because I was young and those were such formative years, I didn't feel the stress. My entire mindset and approach to work now would be completely different from when I was in my 20s.

The Class That Changed Everything

I did a master's degree in the United States at the Missouri School of Journalism. Originally, I thought I would go into the business journalism track and just perfect what I already knew. But the school also had a strategic communication track.

I thought, why don't I learn some new skills, some new hard skills? My English wasn't so good at the time. I was still learning it, still figuring it out. And I figured, okay, if I go into the journalism track, I will always be behind those people just because they have better English than me. I would never be as good as them.

So what else can I learn?

The school had classes in HTML and CSS, in a course called Multimedia Media Planning and Design. It also had a class in infographics, and that's where I learned Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.

I remember when I first discovered vector graphics. I would sit for hours doing online tutorials, figuring out how the software worked. For the record, I haven't opened Illustrator in probably eight years.

That's how I got introduced to web design and graphic design. But I still didn't consider myself a designer for a long time.

Storytelling Plus Visuals

My strategic communication education was mostly about marketing, and my thesis was about native advertising, which was very trendy at the time.

Native advertising back then meant producing an interactive story for a publication. Those stories have elements of infographics and different interactive sections, and journalists know how to produce them. There's a storytelling component where you put on your reporter's hat, but there's also a very important visual component.

I had one internship where I produced infographics, and another where I designed a newspaper. An actual physical paper. I'm that old. I still know how to make a real newspaper out of paper.

The Management Years

After that, I went to work in management, and my graphic design work was kind of on the back burner. I still enjoyed it a lot and did some of it, but most of my time went elsewhere.

As a digital strategy director for a media company, I ran website redesigns and monetization networks.

2018: The Year Everything Changed

In 2018 I had a baby, and I realized that office jobs were not available to me anymore. I would need to find something more suitable for me as a mother.

I don't want to play the motherhood card. Plenty of people build their marketing around it, and that's their call. It's not the angle I wanted.

Eventually I decided maybe I should do websites for clients. I needed to open a company, and I started researching: okay, how do you get clients?

At the time I was on Upwork getting copywriting gigs, as a journalist and a digital strategy person. It was really easy for me to get small jobs. Then I thought, maybe I should restyle my profile and do web design instead.

I was creating websites for clients before I thought I was a designer. Somehow, through people I knew and through past employers, I had already picked up several jobs building WordPress sites.

So I took that experience, redesigned my Upwork profile, and started landing web design work. My husband helped me with it too. We worked as a pair, and little by little it grew.

The Missing Piece

Then I thought: okay, I have this amazing content experience. I can write website copy for clients. I understand the layout. I understand how to write all these little sections for a website.

But there was a missing piece. I did not know how to build a website from scratch, because I was always using somebody else's design. I usually started from a WordPress theme.

So in 2018 it hit me. I need to invest time and money into my design education. I need to learn design and figure out how to make something I create from scratch. How do I make it perfect? How do I improve it?

In 2018, I was using Sketch to design websites. That same year I switched to Figma. In 2019, I discovered Squarespace, and from then on I was learning both at once.

The first collection of templates I created was based on my previous client work, but they were also my attempt to develop a new skill.

Where It All Led

I discovered my visual talent through an infographics class at a journalism school, and I turned it into the business I run today. My storytelling skills went into that same business.

Looking back, almost none of it was planned. The infographics class was a workaround for my English. The first WordPress sites came through people I used to work with. The design education happened because I hit a wall I couldn't get around any other way.

If you're thinking about moving into web design and you're worried your background is wrong for it, that's the part I'd want you to take from this. Mine looked wrong too. It turned out to be the reason the work is any good.