MDE Profiles: Filipa Rolo

Personal Profile

My name is Filipa, but all my friends call me Pipa. As a fisherman’s daughter I’ve always loved the sea even though I get seasick when I’m on a boat for a couple of minutes (fun right?). I love to spend my time with my family, my dog and drag my partner into lots of crazy adventures.

Favourite hobbies: Walks in nature, learning new things – everything crafty, travel & eating (a LOT!), listening to health & wellbeing podcasts, roadtrips, bingewatch history, related series and sitcoms, doing my yoga every now and then.

Favourite marine creature: Sea lion.

2 truths & a lie:

• I love travelling but I hate flying
• I walked 30+ KM in a day around Paris
• I absolutely hate Game of Thrones

Career Profile

I joined RY about 4 years ago, straight from Portugal. I’ve learned and developed my UX/UI skills from junior to senior designer which allowed me to join this beautiful project that is MDE. I started as a graphic designer in a marine sports company where I had the pleasure to work with a beautiful ocean view (one day I’ll get that view again!). Since then, I’ve moved entirely to the digital field and worked across different agencies in Portugal, I've had a lot of freelance gigs all over the world and moved to London in 2019 where I joined RY.

LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/filiparolo/

Responsibilities:

My day to day can be quite different, that’s one of the things that I love in my role. In one day, I might be helping brainstorming ideas with others and on the next day I might be super busy letting my creativity flow around and getting my hands on a project. I do love a bit of a challenge, so problem-solving is also one of my favourite things about my job. I like multitasking and so when I’m in a project I do like to know as much as I can to inform my what I do on the design stage.

Why did you choose this career?

In the beginning I guess because like so many other kids, I was told by my teachers that I could draw nicely which led me to study Arts. But later, from bouncing between if I should follow the design or architecture path I’ve decided to go into design because I got excited with the idea of helping easing people’s life in the most diverse manners.

What do you love about your job?

Product and UX/UI design gives me exactly that ability – to work in something that is going to be used by so many people, to me it increases the responsibility of doing it right. Being able to create based on users is something that gives me the evidence I need to reach the right solutions. On other hand, I do love the fact that I can be really creative without any strings and actually I do love to follow some disruptive trends every now and then.

Skills:

• User experience and user interface design
• Creative thinkin
• Visual design

Career Pathway:

I’ve studied General Design at uni, followed by a Master’s in visual design. While I was doing my masters, I had the chance to work as a graphic and digital designer for a company involved with marine sports. I’ve learned a lot there and had the amazing chance to be close to the sea every day. During lunch we would go down to the beach just to have a break and just that hour made my day entirely. After leaving the company and experiencing others I’ve then decided that I would also like to try and work for other countries, so I’ve gathered a couple of clients from across the globe and would work for them whenever I could. It was exhausting by that time but so much fun to learn about different cultures and get to know different people.

In 2019 me and my partner decided to take the leap and we moved to the UK, and I’ve landed straight away at RY. Since then, I’ve learned and learned and learned from so many wonderful and brilliant people that even without noticing have been key to my improvement and development. 2 years ago, we’ve started this project with MDE, and I simply don’t have words to describe how happy I am working and evolving the platform but mostly working with so many amazing people.

Advise to someone looking to move into the marine/digital/design sector:

If you are new on the role absorb as much as you can from others, learn by practicing and don’t be afraid to share your thoughts with your colleagues…but most importantly make sure you have FUN. That will naturally make your progress along the journey.