Life & Work with Ben Jackson

Today we’d like to introduce you to Ben Jackson.

Hi Ben, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I somewhat stumbled into what I am doing now! I am a graduate of The Design School at Arizona State University, which is where I found my passion for both design and web development.

Before my freshman year at ASU, I was originally planning on studying mathematics and business until about two weeks before class started. I had a realization that I didn’t want to study something that I wasn’t passionate about just because I thought it might allow me to have more monetary success. I knew design was something that interested me based on classes I had taken in high school and I wanted to make sure I was studying something that I could see myself doing for a long time.

While in the Visual Communication Design program at ASU, we had a few course modules where we learned the basics of HTML/CSS and web development. Instantly I was hooked and it was something that I lost time while doing.

Once I started my professional career after school, I worked at a few agencies doing both design and development which allowed me to practice my craft and really hone in on what I enjoyed and maybe didn’t enjoy as much within the industry. Along the way, I started getting inquiries from former classmates, family, acquaintances, and friends of friends to do freelance work.

I had a lot of folks coming back to work with me again because of my design background since it allowed me to speak their language, be more detail-oriented, and produce exactly what they were looking for.

Throughout a handful of years, the freelance work I was doing kept increasing until I hit a point where I was working my full-time job and freelancing an additional 40+ hours per week. It wasn’t sustainable and that was when I decided to leave the agency I was working for and start freelancing full-time.

I started running my own business around 4 years ago which has been a super satisfying experience with equal parts being hard and rewarding. People who have freelanced full-time for large portions of time have my utmost respect because it is a grind that brings on tons of uncertainty and requires your full commitment.

About a year ago, I jumped back into an agency role which has provided me a bit more stability and the opportunity to work on larger enterprise projects, as well as collaborate with tons of really talented designers and developers who push me to try new things and be better than I was the day before.

Having an agency gig now, along with my prior experience freelancing full-time has allowed me to pick and choose the projects I take on and make sure they are a good fit for me. Along the way, I have had the opportunity to work with tons of really cool people who have become more like friends than clients and built a lot of really cool sites.

It feels like I’m just getting started!

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Yes and no. I believe that if you work hard, things will fall into place as they should. This has helped me throughout my career and sometimes has made rockier times seem like less than they are (whether that is good or bad is up for debate).

Ultimately looking back it has been a ton of work and I have had to sacrifice a bit to get to this point. In my mind that I put in work and the sacrifices that were made, have made the successes that much sweeter.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I am a designer and developer. Nowadays, I am doing significantly more web development than design, but I still classify myself as a designer because I bring many of those principles into my development work.

I specialize in front-end development with an emphasis on creative interactions and animations. So far I have been able to carve out a lane for myself as a developer who is a designer at heart, which has provided me the opportunity to work alongside tons of super-talented designers and agencies who appreciate that I can translate their site designs as close to 1:1 as possible.

I am proud of pretty much everything I have worked on in one aspect or another. You are only as good as the last project you did, so I try to make sure that I produce the best work possible for every client.

Do you have any memories from childhood that you can share with us?
I think my favorite childhood memories are riding around on my bike with my brothers and neighborhood friends.

We would play video games, sports or just cause trouble! There was something pure about those times that makes me pretty nostalgic.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://studiojvckson.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/studiojvckson/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/btjackso/

Image Credits
Douglas Bell