My graphic design hero, David Carson.

In 1995 a younger me discovered the genius of David Carson by coming across his book, The End of Print. Carson is responsible for the "Grunge Typography" era on the nineties. Along with my other hero Kyle Cooper, his work greatly influenced the way I saw type and graphic design. Carson is a some what controversial figure in the world of graphic design, personally I loved his use of textured type as graphic layers combining it with provocative and sometimes ambiguous photography. It's just the perfect combination to me.

I was looking through TED talks on my trusty iPad and was pleasantly surprised to find this talk given by David Carson in 2003. I think the broader ideas of creativity and discovery translates very well to photography.

There are two lines I particularly liked from this talk.
"You can't teach intuitive design, so design schools minimizes it 's importance in the creative process. Instead they opt to teach the steps of creating a nice business card design..."

"Don't mistake legibility for communication"

This second line in particular I feel can be carried over into photography. A lot of friends I know approach photography from a strictly analytical formula based perspective. Don't get me wrong, being technically proficient is VERY important, but to let it get in the way of what you are trying to capture is just self defeating. So what if the picture can't merit at the next photography convention. Does that mean it's not a compelling image? We have a favorite line at the studio, "you have to know all the rules before you can break them". So yes, know how to use your camera to get a technically good image. Then go out and experiment with that and push what you are comfortable with. Carson states that his design skills are self taught. Does this mean he never learned the "rules" in order to break them or does it mean he just wasn't influenced by the standard way or doing things and developed in his own direction.

Ok, enough deep thinking, here is his TED talk: