New beginnings: Stepping into motherhood & a new career in graphic design. Meet Jessica.
When Jessica decided to learn Graphic Design, she was preparing for some big changes in her life. After getting married and giving birth to her son, Jessica was finally ready to leave behind a job she had fallen out of love with in pursuit of a career that would bring her satisfaction and better suit her new circumstances.
I was definitely determined to change careers but I was also getting married and planning on starting a family first. I completed the Graphic Designer Associate course just a month before the wedding and I decided not to sit for my exams straight away. There’s a 6-month window for you to take your exams, so that flexibility came in very handy at the time. When I became a mother, my main focus was on raising my newborn son, but once things settled down, I was ready to start looking for jobs and landed my first role within a couple of weeks.
I worked as an interior designer for almost ten years but it eventually got to a point where I wasn’t enjoying what I was doing anymore. My job started feeling like just a job. I wasn’t going into work happy and this wasn’t because I didn’t have a good work environment, so it wasn’t a matter of finding a different company, for example. The job itself was no longer giving me satisfaction and I didn’t want to be doing this for the rest of my life.
I had dabbled with graphic design from my student days and it was always something I was interested in. So when it came to rethinking my career, I thought it would be a good idea to pick it up again and take it further. Working as a graphic designer also struck me as a career path that could come with a bit more flexibility and the possibility of working from home, so this also appealed to me, especially since I have a child.
I knew people who had studied with ICE Malta and had positive experiences there. It had been a while since I had worked on graphic design so I wanted a course that would give me the solid foundations and cover everything in detail. The programme was very thorough with practical, step-by-step explanations that help you use the tools confidently. We were also given practice tasks and guidance on how to work on mock projects to start building our portfolio. The educator was excellent – really supportive, professional, but also very approachable. She was responsive and helpful in her feedback too, and always made us feel welcome to ask questions.
The part-time schedule worked out perfectly since I was still working during the day, and the option to split my course fees into monthly payments was also really helpful since I was preparing to get married at the time, so that made the financial side of things a bit easier on me.
Naturally, I didn’t want to just settle for any position because I wanted to be careful about my career change, but it didn’t take long to find the right job once I started my search. Since I didn’t have any experience in graphic design, I was relying on my certification and portfolio to break into the industry, so the course definitely helped. My goal was always to work in igaming, so that first job helped me gain the experience and confidence to eventually get my current role as Graphic Designer for ibet Group. Looking back, and especially considering that I didn’t have that many expectations when I first started studying graphic design, I’m very happy with how things turned out.