Via SIGNAL VS. NOISE by Matt

“Designing is not a profession but an attitude” is an excerpt from László Moholy-Nagy’s 1947 book “Vision in Motion.”

The designer must see the periphery as well as the core, the immediate and the ultimate, at least in the biological sense. He must anchor his special job in the complex whole. The designer must be trained not only in the use of materials and various skills, but also in appreciation of organic functions and planning. He must know that design is indivisible, that the internal and external characteristics of a dish, a chair, a table, a machine, painting, sculpture are not to be separated…

There is design in organization of emotional experiences, in family life, in labor relations, in city planning, in working together as civilized human beings. Ultimately all problems of design merge into one great problem: ‘design for life’.

We often put “designers” and “creatives” in special silos. But when you look at it from this “design for life” perspective, everyone is designing: writers, programmers, managers, CEOs, HR departments, parents, etc. Design and creativity don’t belong exclusively to people who use Photoshop.

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BittBox gave reason we might be a hardcore graphic/web designer. Let’s do a check list:

1. You’ve had a client that thought they knew more about design than you.

2. Your clients pay you for your professional expertise and skill, yet
   you’ve run into one of ‘those’ clients, that refuses to take the advice
   from the very person he/she is paying for advice (you).

3. You’ve had a client that insisted on using the font “Papyrus,” and
   you had to hold in your barf as you prepped it [the design] for
   printing.

4. You’ve requested a vector logo from a client, and instead, they email you a 72 dpi image they grabbed from a website.

5. You’ve used typography as a texture.

6. You don’t have a favorite font because you love “Typography.” Not
   Fonts. Choosing a favorite font would be like choosing a favorite
   child, it’s just wrong.

7. You collect as many free stuffs from the interwebs as you can on
   your hard drive, hoping that one day, that cool project will come along
   that you can actually use some cool shit on.

8. You’d rather have a free font than a free gallon of gas.

9. It’s hard to talk about frustrations at your job with a group of
   friends because they have no idea what “Vector” or “DPI” is, just to
   name a couple.

10. You’ve had a client ask you to “Make the logo bigger.”

11. You’ve had a client that insists on “filling up the space.”

12. You’ve learned to over-price web design projects because most
    clients are more picky about their websites than a high school girl
    picking out a prom dress.

13. You feel like you’re “On Call” half of the time because clients procrastinate so much.

14. You know keyboard shortcuts that require 4 fingers.

15. You’ve lost hours of work because an application crashed, and you
    had to start over from scratch because you were in the “zone” and
    forgot to save. Basically, you were having so much fun being creative
    that saving was the last thing on your mind at the time.

16. You’ve “Live-Traced” something.

17. You spend more hours per week looking at CSS showcase sites than you do at the gym.

18. The only thing that would make you happier than the demise of IE6 is world peace.

19. You’ve done everything but give up a body part to talk a client out
    of a “Flash Intro.” Yeah. I said it. Flash Intro. Sad, so so sad. (goes
    along with #2)

20. You have enough fonts on your hard drive to last you for: 1 font per day for about a decade, give or take a year or two.

21. You know, explicitly, what a “Flourish” is.

22. You worry about negative space as much as the content area.

23. You get phone calls from friends and family members on a regular,
    sometimes annoyingly-frequent basis, wanting your services for free or
    extremely cheap. (and the “portfolio” line makes you want to throw
    something across the room)

24. You’ve had a client that wants a website they can “update” on their own, but doesn’t know shit about websites.

25. You’re never more than 99% happy with your final product because you
    believe that EVERYTHING can be improved upon. (especially with those
    tight-deadline projects)