8 Funny Things I Learned From Designing That I Apply to Life

I have been design­ing for a cou­ple of years now, and I like to still learn new things and new tricks to make my designs look bet­ter. I have been design­ing for so long that I am not only crit­i­cal of what the things on my com­puter look like, but that habit is start­ing to fol­low me to the out­side world.

If you have been design­ing for a while online, have you ever started apply­ing your online design prin­ci­ples to the designs in the real world? It’s amaz­ing how bad it can get

I have changed some things in my life that all come directly from my design habits online. I like to keep every­thing orga­nized, in best con­di­tion, I now appre­ci­ate art, live a sim­ple lifestyle and love Apple products.

But this post is about the funny stuff I picked up from design­ing for so long. The stuff I am about to list below are all things that come through my mind every once in a while and get me think­ing “I’ve been design­ing for way too long!”

Design Prin­ci­ples I live by Offline

1. Just because a color scheme looks good on a web­site doesn’t mean it looks good on your clothes

Try­ing funky color schemes to design a web­site is some­thing I do a lot. But, I don’t go crazy over the way I dress. A sweat­shirt and some jeans will work for me, but I don’t go all crazy and try funky col­ors like pur­ple and yel­low just because I saw it on a web­site and thought it looked cool.

2. I keep my room sim­ple and love it, but oth­ers hate it

In my room, every­thing is sim­ply done. I have a desk, a tele­vi­sion, a bed and two chairs in my room. I have plenty of space on the ground and wall. But every time a friend comes over, or my fam­ily walks in it’s always “wow, what a bor­ing room.” No one under­stands min­i­mal­ism like a web designer I suppose.

3. In school, I really go over­board while for­mat­ting notes

It’s crazy how over the top I get. When we go over Power Point pre­sen­ta­tions and are forced to take down those use­less lit­tle notes, I find enter­tain­ment in doing stuff I would nor­mally do on a web­site. Like cen­ter­ing text, keep­ing inside the lines and all of that designer stuff.

4. Work­ing in a pub­lic area blows

They say work­ing in pub­lic areas like Star­bucks or some­thing makes you more pro­duc­tive because of all the activ­ity around you. Not only does it make you unpro­duc­tive, but you look like a total douchebag.

I tried work­ing in an office at my dads restau­rant in Florida. It’s dis­tract­ing enough that peo­ple are con­stantly walk­ing through there try­ing to get help from the boss, but it’s another thing sit­ting there with a Mac­Book Pro and hav­ing peo­ple who have never seen an actual Mac ask­ing if they can see it. I will never work out of my own office again.

5. No mat­ter what, my hand­writ­ing will never look like Georgia

Geor­gia is the best font ever, and my hand­writ­ing is prob­a­bly the worst ever. Not only did I come to real­ize my hand­writ­ing doesn’t look like Geor­gia, it doesn’t look like Arial, Tahoma, Ver­dana or eve Comic Sans. Just crap.

6. There’s no CMD/CNTRL + Z in life…dammit

Wouldn’t this be a use­ful fea­ture in life? You fail a test, bam — CMD + Z. But it’s not that easy, and no mat­ter how hard you wish, you can’t undo mis­takes in real life.

7. You look worse “pow­er­ing on” than you do “shut­ting down”

This is just kind of from com­put­ers, but usu­ally at the end of a work­day, the com­puter is all hot and maybe a lit­tle slow for being on all day and it just wants to shut down. When you power the com­puter on, it’s fast as hell and ready to work. But when we as humans go through that process of pow­er­ing on and pow­er­ing off…it’s more like the opposite.

8. “I could have done so much better”

When­ever I get a work­sheet in school, or see a flyer on the wall at a store, I get so picky about it and lists of improve­ments on how it could be bet­ter just race through my mind.

Have you been design­ing too long as well?

When I put this post into ret­ro­spect, it seems like I have been design­ing for a while and maybe too long for some­one at the ripe old age of 16.

But I seri­ously think that being a designer has changed my views offline so dra­mat­i­cally, and even for the best. My mind is always on the cre­ative side and in con­stant thought which I think is good for me. I respect the tools I have and live with, and I don’t have any­thing I don’t use every day.

This was just a fun lit­tle post I would bring up here. Hope you enjoyed it!

Tagged as: design, Fun Stuff