Temiloluwa Kayode's first paid design job earned him ₦500, about $0.37 today, for designing a flyer. At the time, he was still a student learning graphic design in what he describes as a "rough, very unstructured way," teaching himself between classes with no real plan beyond curiosity.
"I started way earlier, when I was in secondary school, when I started learning graphic design," he shared in an interview with Techloy. "Then I started with flyers."
The amount, though meager for his feeding, didn't stay at ₦500 for long. “It started increasing to ₦1,000 ($0.76). Then ₦2,000 ($1.51). Then ₦5,000 ($3.78), then at a time became ₦10,000 ($7.57),” he recalled, describing the small but steady jumps, the kind that look unremarkable individually and only make sense when laid end to end. “Let's just say, my career financially has been on a slope,” he says. “I know I've not gotten to where I want. But I know there's still more.”
One of the more consequential opportunities came from something he hadn't even intended to showcase as a UI design skill. Dunsin Fatuashi, who worked at Coven Labs, had seen a graphic design presentation he'd posted on Instagram and assumed he could design software. It was about design principles, not interfaces, but Fatuashi called him directly and asked if he did UI design.
"At that moment, I did not really know what UI design was," he says. "But I mean, as a Nigerian, come on, the Nigerian in me just said, yes."
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