For Toheeb Popoola, design began with curiosity rather than a carefully mapped career plan.

In 2011, while waiting to gain admission into university, Popoola discovered Photoshop 7.0 on his father’s laptop. He began experimenting with the software largely out of boredom, unaware that the exercises would eventually lead to a career spanning advertising, 3D animation, product design, branding and emerging AI-assisted creative workflows.

Today, Popoola is a Senior Brand & Product Designer based in Glasgow, Scotland. His professional experience has taken him from Nigeria’s advertising industry to digital products and fintech, giving him exposure to different ways in which design can influence how people experience brands and technology.

His first professional design role came in 2013 at Jumia Nigeria. About six weeks into the job, he moved into a 3D animation position at a cable television company.

The following year, he entered advertising as a Digital Executive at CentrespreadFCB.

By then, he had already worked across conventional digital design and 3D animation. His advertising career subsequently took him through agencies including Insight Publicis, DDB and X3M Ideas, where he worked on campaigns for major brands and eventually became a Senior Art Director.

That experience shaped the way he approached creative work, particularly the ability to generate ideas quickly and communicate concepts under tight deadlines.

But advertising also left him wanting something different.

From campaigns to products

Popoola said one of the things that eventually drew him towards product design was the opportunity to see what happens to a piece of work after it reaches its audience.

Advertising campaigns can have relatively short lifespans. Once a campaign ends, designers often move on to the next brief.

Product design offered a different relationship with the work.

Designers can observe how people interact with a product, identify points of friction and make changes based on actual behaviour.

That continuous feedback loop became an important reason for Popoola’s transition into product design.

He wanted to work on products that could evolve rather than projects that were completed and quickly replaced by the next assignment.

His career has since expanded across both product and brand design, with experience in areas including fintech and crypto.

Design in the age of AI

Popoola’s current workflow increasingly incorporates artificial intelligence, although he views AI primarily as a tool for exploration rather than a substitute for creative judgement.

He uses AI-assisted processes to move more quickly from an initial concept to tangible visual directions, particularly when exploring 3D work and alternative creative approaches.

For him, the value is in increasing the number of ideas that can be tested before committing substantial time and resources to one direction.

His experience in advertising has also influenced this approach. Agency work taught him to generate multiple concepts and become comfortable discarding ideas that do not work.

AI has accelerated that process by allowing him to explore visual possibilities more quickly.

But speed does not remove the need for judgement.

Popoola said the tools can increase the pace of production without necessarily improving the quality of the decisions being made.

The designer still has to determine whether an idea is appropriate, useful and strategically sound.

A career across disciplines

Some of Popoola’s most significant professional experiences have come from working in early-stage companies.

He describes his time as a founding designer at Deposits Inc., before its acquisition by Ingo Payments, as one of the projects he is particularly proud of.

Joining the company at an early stage gave him the opportunity to influence both the product and its visual direction as the business developed. He was also there as the company raised $5 million.

Another significant experience came through his work as a founding designer at Vibra, where he helped develop the identity and interface of a cryptocurrency product from the ground up.

His career has also included brand design work in the crypto sector at Bybit, alongside his earlier experience working on national advertising campaigns in Nigeria.

Rather than viewing these roles as disconnected chapters, Popoola sees them as complementary.

Advertising taught him how to generate and communicate ideas. Three-dimensional work developed another aspect of his visual thinking, while product and brand design exposed him to user behaviour, systems and longer-term product development.

Each discipline has therefore become part of the way he approaches new problems.

Finding inspiration beyond the screen

Popoola draws inspiration from a range of digital design platforms, including Pinterest and Mobbin, which offer different perspectives on brand and product design.

He also uses Dribbble and explores generative tools such as Midjourney when testing visual concepts.

Photography and video provide another creative outlet.

Outside his professional design work, Popoola spends time shooting photography and video for a YouTube channel. Much of what he produces does not necessarily make it to publication, but he values the process itself.

For him, working with a camera offers a useful contrast to spending long periods in front of a computer.

Design influences the way he thinks, while photography and video influence the way he observes.

The challenge of working faster

Speed remains one of the biggest challenges in Popoola’s work.

The companies and brands he works with often operate at a fast pace, while the volume of creative work expected from designers has increased.

Artificial intelligence has pushed that pace even further.

Designers can now generate and test creative directions much faster than before, but Popoola believes the increased speed has to be matched by strong judgement.

Producing more work does not necessarily mean producing better work.

The challenge is maintaining taste, strategy and quality while responding to demands for faster delivery.

For Popoola, that distinction is increasingly important as AI becomes more deeply integrated into creative workflows.

Advice for the next generation

Popoola’s advice to young designers is rooted in the importance of understanding what happens after a design is delivered.

He encourages designers to follow their work into the hands of users and observe how people actually interact with what they have created.

That means watching where users hesitate, where they struggle and where their behaviour differs from what the designer expected.

For him, that feedback can be more valuable than simply accumulating additional courses or qualifications.

He also advises designers not to become overly attached to a single professional identity.

His own career has moved through advertising design, 3D animation, art direction, product design and brand design.

Rather than seeing those roles as separate identities, he believes each has contributed to the others.

The ability to understand several disciplines, he argues, can give designers different perspectives when approaching complex problems.

For Popoola, the lesson from more than a decade in design is that a career does not necessarily have to follow a straight line.

His journey from experimenting with Photoshop on his father’s laptop to working across product, brand, advertising and AI-assisted design reflects a career shaped by curiosity, experimentation and a willingness to move into unfamiliar areas.

Now based in Glasgow, Popoola continues to work across brand and product design while exploring how emerging technology can expand, rather than replace, the creative process.