Episode 133 – Anyssa Ferreira

Introducing Anyssa Ferreira

Anyssa Ferreira is a designer and front-end developer from São Paulo, Brazil. She is co-founder of Haste, an agency focused on delivering great user experience with WordPress. Anyssa is also part of the WordCamp São Paulo organizing team.

Show Notes

Twitter | @anyssaferreira

Website | Haste Design

Preferred Pronouns | She/Her

Episode Transcript

Tara: This is Hallway Chats, where we meet people who use WordPress.

Liam: We ask questions and our guests share their stories, ideas, and perspectives.

Tara: And now the conversation begins. This is Episode 133.

Tara: Welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m Tara Claeys.

Liam: And I’m Liam Dempsey. Liam: And I’m Liam Dempsey. Today we are joined by Anyssa Ferreira. Anyssa is a designer and front-end developer from São Paulo, Brazil. She is co-founder of Haste, an agency focused on delivering great user experience with WordPress. Anyssa is also part of the WordCamp São Paulo organizing team. Welcome!

Tara: Welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m Tara Claeys.

Liam: And I’m Liam Dempsey. Today we’re joined by Anyssa Ferreira. Anyssa is a designer and front end developer from São Paulo, Brazil. She is the co-founder of Haste, an agency focused on delivering great user experience with WordPress. Anyssa is also part of the WordCamp São Paulo organizing team. Hello, Anyssa. Welcome.

Anyssa: Hello. Thank you for having me here today.

Tara: So glad to have you. Glad to have someone from the other side of the world in a vertical sense. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself?

Anyssa: Yes, sure. As Liam said, I am a designer and front end developer. I started playing with FrontPage in my teenage. I ended up here today with you with WordPress. Now I have my own agency where I work with a variety of clients, developing everything from corporate websites and e-commerce and plugins and everything that WordPress can do.

Tara: I used FrontPage a long time ago as well. How did you discover WordPress?

Anyssa: Well, after I played with FrontPage, I realized that I had to learn something different if I wanted to really create professional websites. So when I was looking for a platform to build my portfolio, I guess I was in college at the time. I went to a graphic designer college. So I was looking for a platform to just build a simple portfolio and put some images.

I found WordPress, and I didn’t really like it at first. I kind of build a portfolio, didn’t like it and I left. I went to BlogSpot and I built my portfolio there. When I had to build a more robust website, I went back to WordPress, and I thought, “Well, this will be more appropriate for this kind of website this time.”

Liam: That’s super interesting around going with FrontPage and then…I didn’t start with FrontPage. I was Dreamweaver and just coding in text editors and the like. But definitely more of a marketing and designer than a developer. But now you have described yourself as a front end developer. Talk about your transition or introduction or at least willingness to dive into code to the point where you publicly declare that you code, which is something I always reluctantly share. I never describe myself as a developer. And it’s not a bridge that ultimately I wanted to cross. I’d be interested in hearing your story.

Anyssa: Well, that was exactly it. I was reluctant too because I always saw myself as a designer. “I am a designer. I’m not a coder. I’m not a developer.” As I was trying to boot my portfolio in with BlogSpot, I realized that they had these themes or templates and that I could customize to so...