While moving my office (a project comparable to an Indiana Jones archeological dig) it occurred to me that I might be a Designosaur. Now, the Urban Dictionary defines a Designosaur as, “A graphic designer who is behind the times in learning the latest technology. An outmoded artist or designer on the way to being extinct.” But I don’t buy it.To me a designosaur is a designer who traces his roots back to the pre-digital era, the days of T-squares, stat cameras and dry-transfer lettering.Sure a lot of Designosaurs have fossilized but some of us have, like T-Rex becoming a chicken, evolved to thrive in the digital age. With that definition in mind…
You might be a Designosaur if you:
- Wear your X-acto scars with pride.
- Own a set of technical pens. Extra points if they work
- Own pencils that aren’t #2s or, for that matter, have ever used a #2 for something other than standardized testing.
- Have a drafting table which functions as anything other than just another horizontal surface.
- Own a blue pencil.
- Ever made one letter out of another because you’d used up every “r” on your sheet of Letraset.
- Used to consider a one-week turn-around a “rush job.”
- Hear the phrase “bikini waxing” and think of doing paste up on tourism ads.
- Have discussed starting a graphic design history museum with the inventory of your storage closet. Exhibits would include:
- Technical Pens
- T-square
- Parallel Rule
- 45 degree and 30/60/90 degree triangles
- French and flexible curves
- Sizing wheel
- Rubylith
- Dry transfer (rub off) lettering (complete with burnishing tool)
- Know that Pink Pear is not a sixties rock band.