Yasin Ansari

From Agency to Client Side

Category // Interests

I have been working as a website designer for the last 12 years of my life with a good portion of it being spent graphing as a freelance designer in both Kenya and South Africa. About 18 months ago I was about done with doing my own thing and was quite fortunate to find a job with one of south africa’s top online marketing agencies. After building websites for 12 years, working with all kinds of clients and doing the same dance routine over and over again, I was faced with the question where did i see myself 5 years from now.

As passionate as I am about the web and all the is possible online, truth be told working in agency as a designer is hard grueling stressful work, more so as a designer you know deep down inside that the website you go live with is only a small portion of the overall online campaign / strategy and the true genius is in taking that website and turning it into online magic aka visits.

Having worked as a designer, done some front end and back-end development, familiarized myself with the CMS offering in the market, worked through loads of projects and dealt with a variety of clients, being quite confident with web principles and a determination to build some quality work online getting a job as a designer or a developer just wasn’t going to cut it. So armed with passion for the internet, a belief that I could really contribute more and with 12 yrs of hard labor I hit the market with the a very clear mission, to find a job in the corporate market as a web guy.

Then one day thanks to a lead I stumbled upon ETV and after a few months of some hectic interview process, I finally got a job. My designation says web developer but if the last 3 months are anything to go by then WEB DUDE would be a more appropriate role. With the job comes all the perks of corporate along with all the challenges of corporate.

Over the last 3 months I have built internal sites, implemented a collaborative web based system to manage projects, introduced people to the power of CMS with wordpress & drupal leading the way, I have sat in meetings talking about site architectures and strategy’s and most importantly made the possibilities of the internet very much a reality. Sure coming in from an agency put my miles ahead with most people absolutely confused at what I am talking about most of the time which has resulted in me having to re-look at how I communicate what I know into corporate speak.

Overall its been a fun educational journey that has setup the stage for building an awareness and understanding of online and then translating that into results online. From photoshop layouts to presentations, from site structures to site architectures, from getting briefs to writing briefs. This is going to be one of the most interesting years of my life and career.

To online infinity and beyond.
Yasin Ansari