My name is Felipe Urquijo Molina and I am from Bogotá, Colombia. I have always been passionate about visual communication. At primary school, I drew and painted all the time. I remember when I was drawing the time went by very fast - nine hours seemed to be ten minutes - everything around me disappeared and my mind was deeply immersed in my sketches. My first contact with graphic and visual communication was through comics. I used to spend hours creating characters and stories.
When I was fifteen years old I participated in a painting contest. The aim of the contest was to communicate the feeling "Love". I was chosen to represent my school which belonged to the Jesuits' Association in South America. My painting was sent to Chile where the contest was launched. I won first place. That award motivated me to be even more interested in visual communication.
Subsequently, I decided to study graphic design at university. In 1999 I was accepted at one of the most prestigious universities in Colombia in this field: Jorge Tadeo Lozano. However, I experienced some financial problems in 2002. As a result, I had to seek a job to support myself. Fortunately, I found a job in my field. Zerofractal Studio gave me the opportunity to work part-time while completing my studies. It was an extraordinary experience. I learnt about working as part of a team in a professional atmosphere. Moreover, it was my first contact with web design which I found I liked a lot. During this period I took some Dreamweaver MX and Flash MX Action Script courses . I completed these courses and, following this, one of our projects was listed in 18th place in the FIAP awards in Argentina. The project was a corporate website for Lowe-SSPM, a famous advertising agency in Bogota. I was responsible for the creation and the animation of the characters.
At the end of my studies I took a portfolio design class. This course was particularly demanding in terms of my time and therefore I had to resign from my job. While finishing my portfolio, I started looking for a new job. I successfully applied for a junior graphic designer position in Colexpo in 2004. This was a company which specialized in Content Management System (CMS) design. I looked further into web design programs such as HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript and Actionscript. My greatest achievement in this company was winning the Colombia Web online Award 2006 in the category for best government website for Proexport. I was keen to combine my interests at work with my passion for my studies. Therefore I asked for Colexpo's approval in making the redesign of their corporate image and website the topic for my dissertation. Colexpo was supportive in this endeavour and my dissertation was well-received by both the company and my university. This kind of achievement at the company contributed to my promotion to senior graphic designer in 2005. Cisco System and Merck were some of the most well-known clients with whom I worked successfully.
While I was working at Colexpo, Wunderman offered me the post of senior graphic designer with the opportunity of starting a new department. I took this post and began working for Wunderman at a time when Nokia had put their South American account out to tender. Wunderman won the contract to create all Nokia's online campaigns. In order to manage the Nokia and Nokia Trends websites for all of Venezuela and Colombia, Wunderman had to make up a new team which comprised myself, another senior graphic designer and a project manager. We ended up working with 25 people and more than 6 different clients as well as Nokia (Wyeth and Oracle among them). Following this, the company promoted me to the position of interactive project leader for the Nokia account because of my experience with the brand. I was sent to Wunderman São Paulo to attend project leader training. Our best project was Nokia 6131 which won the silver medal in the Caribbean 2007 International Festival Advertisement, the silver medal in the Amauta 2007 award and was listed in the Nova 2007 award.
Working with Nokia made me realize the importance of using English language because, for the most part, the common language of our working groups was English. For this reason I decided to come to the UK to improve my English language skills. This happened in 2007. The first city that I moved to was Bournemouth where I took on two freelance projects. My clients liked my personal style and thus gave me complete artistic freedom to design creative and original interfaces. The first project was an online portfolio for Nadia Calipa who is a talented portrait photographer and the second project was Quayside Bed & Breakfast Hotel website in Poole, Dorset.
Although Bournemouth was a nice city, I needed a more exciting and cosmopolitan place so I moved to London to continue my studies and to look for a challenging opportunity in my field. Moving to London was the best decision that I could have made because I found a job quickly. Currency Solutions contracted me as a part-time graphic designer for their marketing department in August 2008. I have been working there since that time, designing everything they ask of me. We have just finished two big projects: one is the corporate website and the other is the currency converter.
Currency Solutions not only took me on but also gave me the opportunity to take a MA in Design for Interactive Media in Middlesex University which I qualified successfully in 2010.
I have a strong-felt passion for all the things I do in my life. I consider I am good at graphic design and have a talent for it. The most important thing for me is that I can channel my talent in the right direction. I love my career.
Felipe Urquijo Molina