Agency work · 2025
Remote from Karachi, at 18. More than seven sites in three months.
Remote developer for an international agency, building sites to brief for South African businesses.
Eight sites · South Africa
01 — The role
Different industries, entirely different jobs.
A play school in Cape Town, a logistics and commodities firm, a printing business of thirty years, a funeral catering service. The constraint was never the design; it was understanding a business I'd never worked in, fast, and building something its customers would actually use.
Brief in
Each job arrived as an agency brief for a client I'd never met.
Understand fast
Learn what the business does and who its customers are before designing anything.
Build to brief
Design and develop the site to the agency's spec.
Ship
Hand over a live site the client's customers can actually use.
02 — The sites
Seven of the builds.
Each one live on the client's own domain.
03 — What it taught me
What three months of client work taught me.
Learning a business in a day
I sat in meetings with CEOs of companies I knew nothing about — freight, commercial printing, funeral catering. The design was never the hard part. The hard part was working out, fast, what the business actually was and who it was really for.
Arguing a decision
At 18, with people twice my age, I learned that a design decision you can't defend isn't a decision — it's a preference. I also learned that clients change their minds when you give them a reason, not when you insist.
Handing it over
When I left, the agency asked me to train my replacement. Teaching someone else the work was the first time I had to articulate how I actually do it.
More work
Eight businesses, one country, three months.
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