2024 Year in review

It's now the eighth year in a row that I sit down to reflect on the past year. Can you believe I started this back in 2017? If that's your cup of tea, you'll find 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 here respectively.

2024 has passed in the blink of an eye. It's fascinating to look back and see how life changes. While 2023 was all about slowing down—I did less work than ever before—2024 brought significant changes. This December, I'm feeling more tired as it's been quite a full year. The biggest shift came in April when I decided to join Summer Health, my client of two years, as a full-time employee.

Projects & work

Little Plains

Before joining Summer Health, Little Plains was my only client this year. I was thrilled to work with Emmett Shine in my final freelance project after 15 years of independent work. Working with Emmett and the team he assembled was a joy. We still keep in regular contact, and his energy remains an inspiring force of positivity!

Summer Health

Around this time last year, I was working with Summer Health's leadership team on their Series-A fundraise deck. When the fundraise completed a month later, Summer Health was ready to grow. Having worked with them for a year and a half, I knew they would soon start looking for a permanent designer—the workload was steadily increasing.

I had a productive discussion with Matthew where I offered to help recruit a designer but also expressed interest in joining full-time myself. Within a month, we reached an agreement, and I joined the team—ending my 15-year journey as a freelancer.

Although I loved running my own business, two key factors influenced my decision.

1. I had thoroughly enjoyed working with this team and felt that parting ways would have been too soon. While most projects reach a natural endpoint where handoff feels appropriate, with Summer Health and this team, I believe we still have a lot to achieve together.
2. After working on countless projects over the years, it wasn't until I started working with Summer Health and talking to parents that I felt I could make a real difference in people's lives. Recently, I came across a thought-provoking question: "How many of you want to live in the world you're designing?" While I've spent years designing to increase sales, reduce costs, and boost engagement, I'm now designing to help parents (and providers).

In the coming weeks, I'll share more about my day-to-day work, inspired by Paul's The Startup Designer. This year has certainly been my most diverse in many years.

Coaching

Ever since I went full-time, I've declined every opportunity that came my way, except for coaching designers. Mentoring is something I genuinely enjoy. I've realized that startup designers often feel quite lonely in their roles. That's why this year, I've spent more time coaching them rather than freelancers.

I have some spots open for next year, so if you’re interested, let me know!

Website and newsletter

At the start of this year, my website was still in Framer. As I mentioned early on in January, I was eyeing alternatives. No-code tools are great for certain things, but running a blog isn't one of them. I eventually switched to Ghost, after a brief detour via Kirby. I'm really enjoying Ghost, particularly because I can run both my website and newsletter on the same platform. Is it perfect? Far from it—but it does what it needs to do at this point.

I published 17 blog posts in 2023—not a huge number, especially since 3 were updates to existing posts. Still, I'm pleased with writing 14 new pieces, averaging more than one post per month. Since I'm now editing these posts myself, please forgive any occasional grammar or spelling mistakes!

Personal

I've been fortunate to travel more again during 2024. We visited my family in Finland early in January (it was freezing, which proved challenging for driving an EV). I've spent time in New York with the full Summer Health team and had an intense design sprint week in San Francisco with Matthew later in the year. Anna and I also went to Paris to indulge in some great food!

The musical highlight of this year was definitely getting to see Taylor Swift and the Eras tour. While I admit to being a Swiftie, I couldn't have imagined it being this good. She is amazing—there's really no denying it. I also got to see some great shows during Way Out West, including James Blake, Augustine, and many more. The National was a huge disappointment though!

Next year, Anna and I are getting married, and we'll be celebrating with our closest family and friends in our garden 😊

I'm optimistic about 2025, and I hope that a year from now, I'll be able to share some exciting new projects with you!