On being a Graphic Designer...

YOU KNOW YOU'RE A GRAPHIC DESIGNER WHEN:

You can spot bad typography from 100 yds away

You are pro-facebook because 95% of the myspace accounts burn your retinas

You can name more than 200 fonts in under five minutes

You are completely immune to subliminal advertising

You look upon a well-designed project with either:
sympathy OR extreme jealousy

Your hand is permanently stuck in the shape of a mouse

You tell stories of exacto-knife inflicted wounds with grizzled sort of pride

You practically take caffeine intravenously

You've been spending three days non-stop on a project and it still looks like shit.

You find your pulse increase at the sight of a lovely ligature, glasses steam up when an unusually elegant arm, leg, or tail comes in view, and a well-kerned paragraph is apt to make you break into a sweat with excitement.

You buy a CD or DVD for the artwork, even if you have no idea what the actual music or film is like.
(even worse, you don't actually watch or listen to it, just stare at it for hours and hug it in adoration)

you look at the clock and see it's about midnight and think 'I'll go to bed now'... and you actually go to bed about 2-3am.

you need someone else to point out that you're sitting in a room in front of the computer with all the lights off, and haven't noticed

you know what "kerning" is and you really, really like it.



You have a thing for chairs. You don't know why.

You giggle whenever you use the colors F0CCED, EFF0FF and 44DDDD

You give your relatives a lecture about color spaces and profiles when you email them your vacation photos.

Seeing someone use Lens Flare or Comic Sans adversely affects your blood-pressure

You maintain a grid system for your refrigerator magnets.

You organize your CD collection according to the Pantone chart.



You sit at work for eight hours straight just looking at your monitor, waiting for a spark of inspiration that doesn't come.

You're up 'til 5am because you came up with the best idea ever while brushing your teeth.

The hottest dream you ever had was "Trace contour... Find Edges... Pinch... Extrude... Smudge Stick... Motion Blur.... Sprayed Strokes..."

You know Lorem Ipsum by heart.

Your kid knows Lorem Ipsum by heart.

The preschool teacher complains your child won't color inside or outside the lines – only indicate colors on a separate sheet.

Looking at a menu make you go "hmmm, ITC Baskerville italic" rather than "mmmm, lunch!"

And when you finally order, you go for Layer Based Slices with Grain Texture...

You use words about fonts you dislike that other normal people reserve for fascist dictators and serial killers.

Apple+Z is the first thing that goes through your mind if you drop and break something.

You know that rivers are more than just water.

Kerning and leading on your shopping list actually matters to you, and you don't see a problem with that.

Several South American economies suffer noticeably any time you try to give up coffee, or even cut your consumption of it by half.

You know that "bleeding" doesn't hurt.

If you could go back in time you wouldn't go back to see the rise and fall of civilizations, you'd go back in time to destroy comic sans and papyrus.

You've considered naming your children things like 'Kern', 'Pica', 'Bézier', and 'Serif'.

You can understand everything on this list.