20 Signs Of A Professional Graphic Designer
You know you’ve become a professional designer who loves their work when;
1. You have developed a shiny patch on your mouse hand where you hand rubs over the desk about a zillion times a day.
2. The corresponding patch below your mouse is worn away on the desk.
3. You are standing in Boots taking photos of great packaging designs whilst teenage girls snicker away next to you.
4. You are in bed at this time of night on your laptop because you’d rather work than watch something rubbish on tv.
5. Your keyboard is filthy because you insist on eating at your desk all the time.
6. When you do something in every day life like knock a cup over for instance, you can’t quite stop yourself from thinking ‘un-do’ in your mind.
7. No matter what you do, and no matter how many times you change it, your own website always looks god awful to you.
8. Your 3yr old child is able to use Google, and can name Firefox when he sees the icon.
9. You have un uncanny ability to automatically see when something is lined up properly without the need for tools or devices, for instance if a shelf is straight, and where the centre of the wall is to hang a picture.
10. You can’t stop yourself from guessing the fonts on movie titles.
11. If you artwork you admire on posters, billboards, flyers and more…. the first thing you do is hunt for the designers errors.
12. You compulsively click ’save’ every 5 minutes for fear of loosing your brilliant design work.
13. You go into a cold sweat if you log into your computer for the day and your Internet connection is down.
14. When telling a story about something that happened to ‘your mate’, you find yourself having to explain to your ‘normal’ friends with a mild sense of embarrassment …that they are actually a ….well…. sort of friend…well actually someone you’ve been speaking to on MSN for about 5 years but never actually met. But hey, it’s my mate still, sort of…
15. You rarely go to bed before 12am, and the only reason you go to bed at any where close to that time is because good sense tells you that ‘you really must get more sleep’. It’s not uncommon for you to decide to watch a movie at midnight.
16. You’ve learned that if you aren’t fully happy with a concept don’t show it to the client, because chances are the one you don’t like is the one they will pick and then it will have to go into your ‘files of shame’ lest anyone should ever witness it’s spectacle.
17. You think that one day your hand might become stuck in a claw shape.
18. Every now and then you go through a ‘herbal tea’ phase to try and reduce your dependence to coffee, but you always go back to the inky demon eventually.
19. You take your lap top on holiday. Just in case….
20. No matter how many times you tell them, your friends and family can never quite seem to remember the very simple details of what you actually do. You feel like Chandler Bing.
Can you add any more fellow designers? Or maybe entrepreneurs would like to create their own list, I daresay there is an overlap on many of these points.
August 1st, 2008 at 11:55 am
So true!
I am always doing the undo one! I thought I was crazy! And every 6 month’s I go through the “drink herbal tea”, as you said it never lasts!
Brilliant list!
August 1st, 2008 at 2:08 pm
So true! This is genius!
August 4th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
This is an awesome list. I’m guilty of more than a few.
My desktop keyboard could definitely be someone’s grocery list - I’m eating there constantly!
This made me laugh.
Thanks!
August 4th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
Thanks all
Katie, thank goodness I’m not the only person who has a gross keyboard
I think there is probably E-bola growing in mine, lol
Amanda
August 4th, 2008 at 9:27 pm
This is a great list, I can relate to most especially breaking into a cold sweat when the internet is down. We had a power outage the other night and even though I wasn’t actually on or planning to be on the computer I was feeling trapped!
August 7th, 2008 at 8:28 pm
Yes, thats how I feel without the Internet.
When you have the whole world at your fingertips it feels so suffocating to not have it. It feels like an essential requirement in life.
How funny that only a short time ago (I certainly remember it well and I’m not ‘that’ old) we didn’t even have mobile phones let alone the world at our fingertips and we were perfectly happy
August 9th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Lol….now you must get yourself a flask brimming with coffee. It makes those refills so much quicker with no need to unchain yourself from your mouse to do so, lol
August 12th, 2008 at 8:14 pm
Great list…. absulutely spot on
August 19th, 2008 at 1:43 am
You forgot….
You meet someone you know on the street but you can’t converse with them because you forgot your keyboard.
August 26th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
Got to say I did the herbal tea thing and it stuck, I have a fantastic range or “nettle’ “green” and other teas! Sad, I know.
The list is spot on, but I’d also add the bad habit of blurting out the name of typeface used in an advert or packaging etc when with non designer friends and them looking at you like your an alien!
August 26th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
I did the herbal tea thing and it stuck for a couple of months, then one day I ran out of herbal tea and started drinking coffee and hence now I ‘want it’ again.
At the moment I switch throughout the day between a flask of herbal tea and a flask of coffee! I’m drinking Lemon and Ginger tea right now as I type!
September 1st, 2008 at 12:19 pm
LOL… a very good compilation.. never realized i got more than half of the signs until i read this post.
September 3rd, 2008 at 9:41 am
I’m not a graphic designer though I do live on t’interweb so I recognise much of this…
apart from the coffee thing, don’t do caffeine in drinks. But I can’t drive past a Costa without getting a decaf mocha (unless I already have one *grin*)
(and surely all decent designers use trackballs and tablets??)
September 3rd, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Nope not all designers use trackballs and tablets - I think I can call myself a decent designer, and I use a mouse
I even use a mouse when illustrating.
I did try a tablet once, but took it back to the shop because I just didn’t like it compared to using the mouse because that’s what I’ve become used to using.
Best Wishes
Amanda
September 10th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
I did not fit with no. 18, the herbal tea. I have 8-10 espressos a day. The rest fits just about right.
September 18th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
Thanks for telling me about this post
6. When you do something in every day life like knock a cup over for instance, you can’t quite stop yourself from thinking ‘un-do’ in your mind.
So true - Always doing it, actually nearly everything on that list made me laugh - explaining to family what you do is hard, as it’s always more to it than just ‘Graphic Designer’ - what do you say when people ask?
Herbal tea is not that nice, but you do get those bloody health concious days when you think is too much coffee bad for you!!! and then you google it.
that could be another one, when you constantly google everything people say - if someone has told you the house outside is burning down rather than look out the window - you’ll bash it in google!
Anyone else share a similar symptom or am i just weird?
September 18th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
Herbal tea is nice, you just have to find the right tea for you. I used to think it was hard to enjoy, but after trying lots of different sorts I found two/three types that I liked enough it manage to keep me away from the coffee. Ramming each cup full of honey also makes it more palatable (I know, I know)
I’ve been out of herbal tea for about a month at least now though and have failed to find time to purchase more, hence my coffee addiction is in full swing phase now and I’m having something hideous like 8 cups a day, gargggh….
Googling everything….I hear you, I must stop thinking that Google is the best solution to every problem or question in life, ha ha. ( But secretly, come on, we know it is…;) )
Have you seen that episode of The IT Crowd where Moss’s office (the IT department) is on fire and he sends an email to the fire station to come and save them!! ha ha….that is Soooo what a designer would do.
If you haven’t seen ‘The IT Crowd’ you need a good spank. Watch it asap, it’s genius.
September 18th, 2008 at 9:29 pm
Actually another analogy, have you seen My Big Fat Greek Wedding where the dad keeps thinking that any ailment can be solved by spraying it with Windex.
That’s a designer/developer/IT person with Google.
xx
October 13th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
Bugger……..all of them except the Herbal Tea one….definitely over-addicted to coffee.
One that constantly reminds me that I’m a professional designer is my un-ending and to-date fruitless search of the internet for a hack that will allow me to use the wireless “Mighty Mouse” from my Mac on my PC.
October 14th, 2008 at 10:29 am
My coffee habit has got so bad lately that my desk seems to be permanently smeared with coffee… I have to keep constantly wiping my desk of coffee stains from where I pour it from my flask.
The herbal tea sits next to the coffee jar in the kitchen mocking me each day as I ignore it. I did have one herbal tea yesterday though …ahem…better than nothing.
I’m trying to at least ban the ‘flask’, I think it leads to excessive consumption - I’m making myself go and make each individual cup and the kitchen is three flights downstairs.
I’ve only had one coffee today! I’ve made myself wait until 11am for the second. I’m sure by 6pm I’ll be here with a flask full of the stuff, slurping at it like a crackhead.