Chipmunk behavior

Good design lights up my mind when I see it, the vivid colors and perfectly juxtaposed shapes setting off a circuit in my brain that compels me to further understand this work of art. In everyday life out in the real world, I take note of the accents and totality of the piece, room, or whatever has caught my eye. On the web, however, I have the power of my computer to aid in my remembrance. A simple ⌘-shift-3 or ⌘-shift-4 allows me to record a perfect snapshot of my visual field: a web site, a form’s layout and design, a navigation bar, a simple combination of colors and images. Basically, I hoard like a chipmunk before winter (only I do it all year long).

Right now, I have a desktop full of Picture ##.pdf files. This happens about once a month, at which time I am required to go through them, pick out the really good stuff—_la crème de la crème_—and rename each file to something appropriate. My naming, naturally, is very arcane, usually amounting to “Excellent colors” or “nice block” or “cool navigation.” Of course, there is more that one appealing manner to design these sorts of web elements, so I start tacking on numerical suffixes to the ends of the files when I run into duplicates. I cannot wait for Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger, which will be brimming with meta data goodness. (For those who are not aware, meta data is simply data about data like filenames, dates, file extensions.) Mac OS X v10.4 will automatically index these pictures and they will be at my disposal using Spotlight, the new and cool search functionality that comes with that operating system.

Unfortunately, for the moment, I am stuck performing the manual task of renaming and filing. Perhaps I should collect these captured fleeting visions of design into a more permanent and creative display. I’ll have to think about that one.