Hello! I’m Maruf.
I was born and raised in Dhaka, and I’ve lived here all my life. It’s where I work from today, designing software for teams in other parts of the world.
Childhood
I’ve been making art for as long as I can remember. Poster colour was my favourite, and my parents encouraged me to enter art competitions. I won prizes at many of them, and later I received national certificates for my art.
My father was an art teacher, and he learned his art from my grandmother. He was a great teacher. Both of his eyes had problems and he couldn’t see properly, yet somehow he kept drawing and kept our family going. He’s retired now.
He was usually busy with work, so in those years other art teachers taught me.
2016
I dreamed of studying at Charukola, the Faculty of Fine Arts at Dhaka University. Back then, being an artist wasn’t seen as a stable career, and we didn’t have much money. Not many people supported the idea, my parents included.
So I found another way to keep making things. In 2016 I was learning Adobe Illustrator and got good at designing cards. A local shop paid me 1,500 taka for one. That was my first paid design, and I still remember the amount.
At university I joined the cultural programmes and made their graphics. More real projects followed, mostly brand and visual design.
See the brand study on Behance
2020
In 2020 I moved to UI design. I loved designing for the web, and building digital products felt like the work I was meant for, and the career I’d enjoy most. I taught myself through case studies and concept projects.
I love every one of those projects, but Rokkha stays closest to me. It’s a concept app for the unsafe situations women face in Bangladesh. It taught me early that if you really want to solve a problem, you can build a product around it.
See Rokkha on Behance
2022
In 2022 I started working with clients on Upwork. My first client was hello:here, for a short project: a bio-link platform for real estate agents. In 2023 I joined them as User Experience Manager and stayed for two years.
Those years taught me to manage deadlines, test properly and work closely with other people. I also saw how a product suffers when a team doesn’t work as one and nobody makes time to polish. I’d rather fix those things than repeat them, so now I say what I think is best for a project, and I warn early about what shouldn’t be done.
Today
The part I love most is the thinking: research, working out flows and deciding what to build, until my brain feels fried.
What I don’t like is a decision made without enough understanding or data. I check the data properly before I settle on anything. Half-cooked decisions get changed, then changed again, and the product pays for it.
Art still shows up in my work. Years of painting gave me a good eye for colour, and brand design gave me a feel for visual style.
The dream
What’s next.
I want to work on as many unique projects as I can, and keep learning as I go.
AI arrived in the middle of my career. It has made the industry less stable, but for me it has been a good addition: working with it feels like having more than one brain. On many of my projects, AI-assisted wireframes, testing and data analysis led to a more efficient flow and a clearer final decision than brainstorming by hand ever did.
That’s why, one day, I’d like to write a book about creative workflows assisted by super-intelligent AI.
When I log off
Outside of work.
When I’m not working, I take photos, go cycling and look after my plants.
- Plant care
Contact
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For work, a collaboration or just a chat about a product, message me on Upwork.
Hire me on Upwork