I may as well have a t-shirt made up with that statement. But that would require printing, and I've pretty much established how I feel about it.

My interest, and the direction I pursued when I graduated from college, was the world of video graphic design. Good old 72 dpi. Fuzzy edges. RGB. NTSC. Watch out for that white level.

Making the transition to interactive was fairly smooth: Good old 72 dpi. Fuzzy edges. RGB. Only 216 colors.

Frustration began to set in when the company I was working for began taking on print projects. Suddenly I was faced not only with having to choose, but to understand, the difference between CMYK and "spot" colors. Why is black "K", and not simply "B"? When is bleeding OK?

Sending out a file for print caused me the kind of anxiety reserved for running into old boyfriends. Checking a proof required an incredible attention to detail and the knowledge of what to look for. I was definitely learning on the job and the stakes were high.

Unlike a website where you can make a change happen in minutes and an error is fixed, print lives on forever. A print mistake is a costly mistake. And so, to prevent those mistakes from happening, you become vigilant about everything--set-up, design, proofing, color selection, image selection, spell-check!

And what I discovered from the maddening minutiae of the world of print is how to be a better designer, no matter the medium. All of that attention to detail, and the knowledge that something can (and almost always will) go wrong, makes you humble. And that's a good thing.

So, while I "hate" print, it's like that difficult teacher you "hated" in high school who you learned the most from because you were challenged to always do better.

There you go. And here I go, off to find the perfect font and color for my "I HATE PRINT" t-shirt.

Anyone else want one?