I’m looking for advice transitioning from a more traditional graphic design career path of print, advertising and some web/email design into more of the product/UX design lane. I have over 7 years experience in traditional design work, but am finding myself leaning towards ui/ux more and more and would like to make the jump. I’m just not sure the best way to land a gig without a full portfolio of ux stuff. While I don’t have true ux experience, I have a ton of design theory knowledge and have developed plenty of sites and emails. Thanks for any advice you may have!
UX Design is a whole new ball game. Your design background will definitely help, but will only get you there halfway. You’ll quickly notice that layout and composition works very differently on mobile app compared to print and other medium. Therefore you definitely need to build a UX portfolio to prove that you have made that jump. Even higher level ICs and directors need to present their portfolio too. Although the focus would be different. Checkout http://www.dougseidman.com/ for reference. Finally, biggest gap you will notice is the product thinking and process. Product design follows a somewhat pretty well defined process, and also requires a LOT of design rationale behind your decisions. One of the key skill would be to defend your design decisions and convince other PMs and Engineers.
For a lot of UX roles a formal education is asked. See if you can join a Masters program part-time or something. There are also a few bootcamps with money-back guarantee (although I've heard companies don't value these much). Not sure about the quality of the program but something to check out : https://flatironschool.com/career-courses/ux-ui-design-bootcamp/san-francisco
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You need a portfolio. You can start designing a product for a problem that you have.