In the realm of web coding and design, the line between amateur work and professionalism is extremely blurry… a line that’s blurry enough to trick you into thinking that you need glasses.

Corny metaphors aside: Think about it. I believe the real designers here are the ones who bust open their favorite text editor and graphics program in order to create an attractive and standards-compliant layout, completely from scratch. On the other hand, many people simply acquire their own copy of Dreamweaver and immediately dub themselves a web-developer.

So, with this in mind, I can honestly admit that I’m not a professional. On a scale from beginner to expert, I would consider myself an intermediate (at the most). Do you believe me? Luckily, my friend Kilroy referred me to a nice list of reasons why I might be a hardcore web/graphics designer. I considered it worthy enough to post right here on my own blog. In addition, my responses to each of the tips will be written in non-bold style. Why don’t you click past the break and take a looksee?

  1. You’ve almost rear-ended the car in front of you because you were analyzing a font on a billboard. I suppose this can somewhat apply to me, simply because of my tendency to be over-observant and criticize the problems in commercial advertisements.
  2. You get pissed when a free Photoshop brush you download is less than 1000px in size. I can’t say I’ve seperately downloaded any photoshop brushes… yet.
  3. You’d rather study the paisley pattern on your boyfriend/girlfriend’s shirt than listen to what he/she has to say. Paisley patterns are definitely pretty cool, although I wouldn’t recommend using them in web design.
  4. You can use keyboard shortcuts at light speed, blindfolded, but you can’t type a paragraph of text without staring at the keyboard. I can do keyboard shortcuts and type on the keyboard at efficient speeds without looking. What are you talking about?!
  5. You’ve had “Software Nightmares,” when you’ve been working way too much. This may have actually happened once…
  6. You consider meals interruptions. Definitely.
  7. You’ve learned your lesson and stopped using the word “final” in any file name when saving. It’s not like I ever started using the word “final” in my file names. This is common sense (Of course I always go back and make changes every couple of minutes).
  8. You clean your keyboard more often than you wash your car. Not applicable. I don’t own car… but I guess I do enjoy shaking the food crumbs from under the keys.
  9. You’ve intentionally given up trying to explain your projects to non-designers. I actually quite enjoy explaining my projects to non-designers. It’s just more difficult when the person you’re talking to is absolutely clueless.
  10. You see CMYK and RGB like Neo sees the Matrix. Although I can certainly understand these acronyms, it’s not like I think about colors all the time (unless I’m actually in the middle of working on something).
  11. You’d rather organize your desktop than your sock drawer. Absolutely true.
  12. When you heard that Adobe was acquiring Macromedia, you had a Design Orgasm. Personally, I didn’t really care.
  13. When you look at Album art all you see are grunge Photoshop Brushes. (Then you see the album art a couple minutes later) Wow.. this is true. There really are a lot of grunge Photoshop brushes in this new album I bought… Hmm.
  14. You’ve Photoshopped out a watermark for a comp or mock-up. I can’t say I’ve never done this. Whoopee!
  15. You’ve actually $paid for a font. Why would I do that?
  16. You’ve totally slaughtered a great design concept because the client thinks he/she knows best. (everyone thinks they are a designer) Fortunately I haven’t gotten to this point yet.
  17. The amount of words you’ve written with a sharpie labeling burned discs total more than the amount of words you’ve read in novels. Although I’ve written on a lot of burned discs, I can’t say it’s actually more than the words I’ve read in novels. That’s quite a stretch.
  18. You’ve had to explain to a client that a layered file wasn’t part of the deal. Again, not necessary/applicable.
  19. You’ve kept a ragged concert ticket just so you could scan it. I’ve certainly kept things for scanning.
  20. You’ve nicknamed the OSX spinning wheel. (and not affectionately) Since when did I use a Mac?!
  21. You bookmark a resource more often than you have a fun night out on the town. Not so sure. I’ve bookmarked some good tutorials, but not that much.
  22. You’ve intentionally overbid a project because you can sniff out a bad client from a mile away. Never happened.
  23. You can’t go to a restaurant without secretly critiquing the menu design. Again, this goes along with my tendancy to over-analyze and criticize advertisements and other things (including menus).
  24. You have an amazingly huge font collection, and an amazingly short temper. There is truth in this.
  25. If you had a penny for every mouse click, you would have been a trillionaire 3 years ago. Hahah! Well, I can dream, can’t I?