A stack of hats!
I've had a long and unusual career arc where I've worn a lot of very different hats — but rather than switching from hat to another, it's felt a bit more like adding more hats, one on top of the other! This has ended up making me something of an all-around digital media consultant — these days with accessibility in digital media as my main focus. I'm proud to be self-taught in all the various disciplines I've dabbled in. Here's some background on my career path that led to this very tall stack of hats, and how they all inform my career as a digital accessibility consultant.
Illustrator
Although my professional career has been in digital media, I was actually not the kind of kid who grew up in a house with computers. I've been an artist all my life, like from the time I was old enough to hold a crayon, and I actually started my career in my early twenties as a professional illustrator. As a kid I assumed art would be my career throughout my whole life.
In the very beginning of the dot-com boom era I was lucky enough to land a large freelance contract working for a brand-new, tiny startup in New Jersey that needed a ton of illustrations for one of their clients in Philadelphia — we're talking analog illustration; pen and paper! This project spanned a few months and involved probably a couple hundred illustrations, and the company found some clever ways to pitch my illustration services to their other clients as well.
Web designer
While working with this startup's design team and seeing how they scanned and colorized and tweaked my artwork, I got interested in Photoshop, and I started playing around with graphics stuff on the company's computers after hours. I had never used a computer before, and I was fascinated! I quickly got proficient at digitizing/colorizing my artwork, and this tinkering also led to my interest in graphic design and website design. Eventually this same company hired me to be one of their full-time web designers.
Web developer
While designing websites professionally, I got interested in coding, and I basically became a self-taught front-end developer — mostly just by viewing the source code of lots of websites, and also by hanging out with the devs and asking them stuff. I worked as a full-time designer-developer hybrid for a few years. This combo was common in the early days of the web; not so much now.
While living in Philadelphia I got recruited by my first big healthcare marketing agency, and there I ended up sort of accidentally* specializing in front-end dev. I was a senior dev for a couple years.
(*Accidentally? Yes! Feel free to skip this aside. So, this is sort of unbelievable; I'd been recruited by an acquaintance who was part of the leadership of this company. He wasn't directly involved in the hiring process, and I assumed he described me as a hybrid designer-dev when recommending me to the hiring manangers. After my interview, when their recruiter called me to tell me I'd got the job, I was very surprised when they told me I'd have to choose if I was going to be a designer or a developer! Crazy, right? They hired me without knowing which role I'd be in, and it's pretty surprising that they didn't just decide for me — and tell me! — based on their needs. I can sort of see how this probably happened; this was, again, in the early days of the web, and this particular company was specifically on a mission to grow from being focused mostly on video and print to becoming truly digital, and hiring me was part of that plan. They may not have had a clear vision at the time as to how that was going to work. Anyway, it was kind of baffling that they asked me to choose after hiring me. I was disappointed to have to choose creative or dev and not be able to do both together, which I felt was my sweet spot. Having already met the brilliant designers at this place, I thought I could probably offer more as a full-time dev, so that's what I picked. It felt very strange and definitely a little sad to let go of my creative career path at that time, but of course I still continued doing creative projects on my own.)
Freelance
After a couple years of being a dev in that shop, I eventually decided to move to France, so I quit my agency job and become a freelancer, mostly working for clients in the US. During that time I probably did about 75% dev work and 25% design and illustration. Living and working overseas is also when I got very interested in writing, mostly blogging about my life in Paris and travels in Europe, and this motivated me to get familiar with search engine optimization and contextual ad placements. SEO became sort of a hobby of mine, and I still employ those skills today.
(Somewhere around this time I also took up a couple other digital hobbies that served me in a few freelance projects and in which I still occasionally dabble: 2D animation — using what was known as Flash at the time — as well as gif animation and pixel art.)
Technology director
After five years living in France I moved back to the US and settled in NYC, and there I was recruited to be a dev for another big pharma agency. And after a couple years with that shop, they moved me into the role of tech director, where I managed a team of devs and consulted with internal teams and clients on web technologies.
This new role was a big change for me in that I found myself no longer making digital things but rather talking about the making of digital things. And this turned out to be a great fit for me! A lot of devs don't really like talking to clients or attending meetings; I actually really enjoy it and I like to think I have a natural talent for it.
Director of creative technology
After several years as tech director, the leadership of the company saw an opportunity to create a new role for me in a sister agency; a large production studio. As their director of creative technology I was able to leverage both my creative background and my tech background. I led a studio design team — this was my first time managing designers as a creative director — while continuing to consult on various digital media topics with my clients and colleagues. In this role I specialized in presenting to clients and colleagues on digital best practices, while supporting the design team in their day-to-day work. A very big part of my job was reviewing the creative work that was coming to us from other shops and vetting it for adherence to digital best practices. Working in a studio environment was interesting in that there was a large focus on efficiency in the production of digital pieces, as we had our hands on several dozens of them every week.
During this time, consulting on both creative and tech together, and reviewing tons of digital layouts from different external teams — which were often not created with best practices not the user in mind — I became passionate about advocating for accessibility in digital media, and after a couple years I decided to make the switch to doing it full-time.
Accessibility specialist
As a digital accessibility consultant, I'm able to leverage all the skills I've learned as a creative, and as a tech guy, and as a pretty good writer, and as someone who enjoys educating and guiding (and persuading!) people. I've had the privilege throughout my career to be involved in all of these different moving parts and see how they intersect. It was fun to train for and take the exams for the CPACC credential and the Section 508 Trusted Tester certification and find that most of the topics involved were things I'd already learned on the job in recent years.
Anyway, two questions I get asked a lot are, "What brought you to this kind of work?" and, "What is the unique value that you can bring to this role?" and my story above is the answer to both of these!
– Manning
Questions/comments? Feel free to contact me at manning@manningkrull.com. I update these articles pretty frequently — best practices evolve over time as the world of digital quickly changes, and I always welcome insights from others.