You Know You're A Designer When...

you always judge a book by its cover
your weekly sermon is to download iStockphoto's free image of the week.

You see a Dulux 'We know the colours that go' van, look at the two colours on the van and think 'do these colours actually go?'.

When...

• You know the CMYK splits for a number of Pantone solids by heart
• You can tell who knows what they're doing with type by looking at the spaces between words and the ends of the lines
• You don't hate any colour, they all have their uses
• You miss the smell of squeakers (as we used to call them) and the chalkiness of gouache
• You chafe, by instinct, against using A sizes for anything... despite practicality
• You pull apart cereal boxes and other packaging just to look at the spot plates on the bars
• You secretly start from the premise that the client is always wrong, in some way or another
• You have a love-hate relationship with printers, reps and pre-press guys (they're always guys)
• You do some of your best work listening to music, not sitting in silence
• You do some of your best work at 2am
• You really really like Helvetica, especially Neue, but never use it
• You really do care about matte displays
• You have a lot of black clothes... but you're not a goth
• You wish life had a history palette
• You post in threads like these, instead of working on that project that's causing problems
• You type your bullets

You don't hate Flash sites.

When you know when to use "your" as a opposed to "you're."

When to use an "En" dash and when to use an "Em" dash– in design, not HTML.

You constantly think 'Apple+Z' when you screw something up in real life.
You do hate flash sites.

You get annoyed when driving past gas stations and notice they have put the "8"s in the price signs upside down.

You're sitting in traffic and you start re-designing everything you see– billboards, signs, bumper stickers– by reflex.

You know you are a designer when...

You take your Pantone Swatch Book to the hardware store to buy paint.

sigmadog said:

You know you are a designer when...

Click to expand...

You repeatedly find yourself looking at packaging and wondering whether you're the only person in the whole world who knows that if you baseline shift text on a path down a few points, it stops doing those horrible gaps opening up between the bottom of the characters when the text hits a particularly tight curve in the path.

Seriously. It's everywhere. Don't they teach kids anything these days?

Also: if you absolutely must use ComicsCartoon, there are extrabold variants of all the numbers, and punctuation, built into the font. It's ALT-SHIFT and whatever key you would normally press.

Cheers!

Jim

...you absent-mindedly start proofing menus in restaurants, instead of choosing your meal.

You know you're a designer when you spend your money on projects rather than a holiday or uni

When you spend 2 months wage on color calibration hardware and a A3 printer, rather than get a Car...

You start naming and criticizing fonts at inopportune times (i.e. on a date, at the movies, in the airport...)

Blue Velvet said:

• You secretly start from the premise that the client is always wrong, in some way or another

So true!!


• You have a love-hate relationship with printers, reps and pre-press guys (they're always guys)

Not all printers/prepress guys are bad. I am a prepress guy and I know how to correctly design files and make them ready for press. Just like not all designers are self centered, egotistical pretty boys who dont want you to touch their native files even when they are not press ready in the slightest


• You do some of your best work listening to music, not sitting in silence

So true, just ad the working in the dark part and you're spot on

Click to expand...

SwiftLives said:

You start naming and criticizing fonts at inopportune times (i.e. on a date, at the movies, in the airport...)

Click to expand...

On my first date with my wife I did this. Me "do you know what the name of that font is?" pointing to the menu at the restaurant. My wife "What? Font? umm no". Me "Its copperplate gothic bold." feeling good about myself. My wife "oh...you know what font that is huh?". Me "Yes!" now feeling like a total loser.

Its ok I guess my nerdiness charmed her in some way or another.



Ok so here's one of my own
You know you're a desiner when you can point out in movies, tv shows, etc. that the computer that is being used is a mac, and you can either name the model number or the generation of the computer.

...you spend more time and money on your portfolio than you do on your clothes to present it.

sigmadog said:

You know you are a designer when...

You take your Pantone Swatch Book to the hardware store to buy paint.

Click to expand...

Been there, done that

That you believe you're inherently better than other people.

a cat *miaow* said:

That you believe you're inherently better than other people.

Click to expand...

Um...we are!

You've got to be your own #1 fan. No one else is going to be

When you keep walking into Lush stores just to look at the writing on the chalkboards.

Lush USA

You name fonts used on commercials, posters and packaging in your head.

When you get a new apron at work, you do your name in helvetica...

You change one color by 1/16 a shade and it looks completely different to you.

You look at anything in Papyrus and throw up in your mouth a little bit.

You always think of ways a local business can change their logo ( especially here in El Paso, TX where everything looks like it was done in MS Paint or Word Art!!! )

You judge every business card you're given.

You bookmarks contain: fonts, other design blogs, brushes, Photoshop stuff (I'm still a newb sorta ) and random sites that have nothing to do with design, you just like the logo.


my site is in my sig.