Hello.
My name is Tina, and I am a Design Junkie. (Hi Tina)
If you don't know what I mean, then read on and it might get a little clearer.
The concept of a junkie can apply to any type of design, really. Do you collect paint chip cards, fabric and wallpaper swatches, and pages from magazines with pictures of great rooms? Then you, my friend, are an Interior Design Junkie (IDJ). If you watch shows like "Pimp My Ride" or "OverHaulin" and get hyped up when the Discovery channel runs a show on future cars, the you are an Automotive Design Junkie (ADJ).
Personally, I'm a Graphic Design Junkie (GDJ). The symptoms:
1. I belong to a website called
2. I have over 1300 fonts. This isn't enough. When I have nothing else to do I scour the web looking for more. Got any good ones? Wanna trade (like baseball cards)?
3. I have so many fonts, I use a separate program to organize them. It's called The Font Thing. I can group them together in whatever method makes sense to me, so I have a groups like 'retro', 'futuristic', 'classic', 'funny', 'typewriter', etc. I can temporarily install a font, use it, and then uninstall it to keep things like MS Word from having 1300 fonts in it's list.
4. I have willingly browsed the Flickr set on business card design inspiration.
5. When I get bored and can't find any good fonts, I do weird things like make web 2.0 badges (aka 'violators' aka those star shaped sticker lookin' thingies on websites), glassy orbs and globes, cartoon flowers and people, and logos using Open Source software like the GIMP and Inkscape. Just for fun, you know.
6. I can completely rationalize my desire to spend a couple hundred dollars on a used Wacom digitizer tablet (where you draw with a stylus instead of a mouse). After all, think of the money I'll save on co-pays and wrist braces by NOT developing carpal tunnel...
Edit: Can't believe I forgot # 7!
7. I have visited three online color picking and combining websites within the past month. Two of them are still up in one of my browser windows. Color Jack let's you combine colors and then download the palette in several different formats. Well Styled's picker gives you fewer color combination options but more palette downloading options. VisiBone's ColorLab has been around for years and is still one of the most popular pickers around. You can't download the palette, but it is the only one I've seen that will show you how one color will look like on another when used for text. Too neat...
*Sigh*
So, there you have it. My dirty little secret is out: I am a Graphic Design Junkie.
OK, enough writing. I'm gonna go drool over some pretty colors and download some more fonts!!!
June 8th, 2007 at 02:20 pm 1181312449
You drool over colors and fonts like I drool over numbers and mutual fund prospectuses.
I can't say I *get it* but most people don't get me either - hehe. We all have our passions!
June 8th, 2007 at 02:49 pm 1181314154
June 8th, 2007 at 02:57 pm 1181314632
June 8th, 2007 at 03:09 pm 1181315345
MM: Don't worry, I get your thing for numbers. There's something beautifully symetrical about double-entry accounting (wow, I AM a geek!). Playing with spreadsheets kinda goes with the whole geek thing. Plus, I get to add all the pretty auto-format cell background colors!
PCJ: What type of newsletter do you need to send out? I'll be happy to see if I can find some tips for you...
June 8th, 2007 at 03:27 pm 1181316423
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June 8th, 2007 at 04:39 pm 1181320790
Koppur: Even an IDJ would love the colorlovers website I linked to in the post. Some of those palettes I can COMPLETELY see being the colors for a room: walls, trim, chairs, drapes, they're all right there... You should check it out, see if you find some inspiration. Well, some more
And Homebody, I haven't seen apartment therapy. Sounds like something Koppur might also enjoy!
June 8th, 2007 at 06:09 pm 1181326191
Here is the link. It is kind of a difficult site to manever around actually, so thought this might be easier.
June 8th, 2007 at 06:52 pm 1181328764
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June 9th, 2007 at 04:31 am 1181363511