At first, I was worried there would not be many places for me to see a “Q” in the wild. After all, it’s one of the most uncommon letters and has one of the most unique shapes in the alphabet. That being said, I ended up finding several examples the same day we got this assigned – The back of a monitor from the right angle, for example. Although, I continued to look out of pure curiosity while still keeping that first idea in my back pocket. When I got back home though, I realized that the round shape of the light combined with the straight edge of my wall ended up creating a “q” with a thick stem, and I had not previously considered or seen lowercase at all. As such, I went with it.
One of my friends whom I had known for a few years and hung out with a few times decided to study abroad in Denmark for a few months just to clear her head at the time. While she was there though, she decided that she loved the country enough to pull as many strings as she could to transfer permanently from the University of Washington to a Danish university. Denmark is currently ranked as the 2nd happiest country in the world, only barely behind finland, according to Wisevoter (https://wisevoter.com/country-rankings/happiest-countries-in-the-world/). According to the official website of Denmark, it is due to a mix of hygge/coziness, social equality, and community spirit as well as other life benefits such as tuition-free college, free healthcare, and lower crime rates compared to countries like America (https://denmark.dk/people-and-culture/happiness). Furthermore, they are one of the most progressive countries in the world in many ways, but especially with LGBT rights (especially regarding trans people) – anybody over 18 can apply for a legal sex change, and options such as X gender are available for public records. Furthermore, gender expression is included in the list of protected identities, LGBT parents can petition to adopt, and same-sex activity has been legal since 1933 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Denmark). And while some of the processes for transgender people starting their transition may not be quite as easy as in America (you can get an HRT appointment set up within an hour of calling Planned Parenthood), Denmark seems to make up for it with their culture which seems to be significantly less hostile than America towards all groups of people. Lastly (at least within this blog, for the sake of not over-explaining), the European culture of travel is something I greatly envy – other countries being so much easier to access via train without having to worry about passport troubles or strict TSA agents is dream-like as someone who takes great, great joy from traveling and exploring new places.
For these reasons of safety, comfort, and culture, I think working in Denmark sounds amazing. This is not even to mention the idea of Scandinavian design principles being more prevalent, which would make for good studying and good practice.
Kubapay
It did not take long to find this listing on Glassdoor – although the more I looked into it, the more intriguing the listing was. Kubapay is a company focused on tap-to-pay systems that partner with various transit services (think the yellow Orca tap machines). The listing itself is for a UI/UX designer, and according to the description the focus is on creating and/or designing webpages and apps while maintaining the pre-set brand guidelines (as Erik predicted many, many times), researching (stealing from) other brands and user stories while doing so.
Screenshot of Glassdoor listing with user-submitted reviews
The listing also mentions a lot of tech-startup-like perks such as “employee club with monthly events, wine tastings, Friday bars etc.”, and although while the salary is not explicitly stated, what is instead listed is “Competitive salary and benefits”, which depending on the contract would be good enough for me, considering that rent in Denmark is on average 40.7% lower than the US while having a near-identical cost of living bar-rent (https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/country_result.jsp?country=Denmark). From my experiences with UI/UX so far combined with the research I’ve done, I really think that I would enjoy this job in this area.
Although the language barrier would be a bit difficult, JC got over it, didn’t he?
