TED2003
David Carson: Design and discovery
Filmed:
Readability: 3.4
917,473 views
Great design is a never-ending journey of discovery -- for which it helps to pack a healthy sense of humor. Sociologist and surfer-turned-designer David Carson walks through a gorgeous (and often quite funny) slide deck of his work and found images.
David Carson - Type designer
David Carson is the "grunge typographer" whose magazine Ray Gun helped explode the possibilities of text on a page. Full bio
David Carson is the "grunge typographer" whose magazine Ray Gun helped explode the possibilities of text on a page. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
00:18
I had requested slides,
0
0
3000
00:21
kind of adamantly,
1
3000
2000
00:23
up till the -- pretty much, last few days,
2
5000
3000
00:26
but was denied access to a slide projector.
3
8000
3000
00:29
(Laughter)
4
11000
5000
00:34
I actually find them a lot more emotional --
5
16000
3000
00:37
(Laughter)
6
19000
2000
00:39
-- and personal,
7
21000
3000
00:42
and the neat thing about a slide projector
8
24000
2000
00:44
is you can actually focus the work,
9
26000
3000
00:47
unlike PowerPoint and some other programs.
10
29000
3000
00:52
Now, I agree that
11
34000
3000
00:55
you have to -- yeah, there are certain concessions
12
37000
3000
00:58
and, you know, if you use a slide projector,
13
40000
2000
01:00
you're not able to have the bad type
14
42000
3000
01:03
swing in from the back or the side, or up or down,
15
45000
3000
01:07
but maybe that's an O.K. trade-off,
16
49000
3000
01:10
to trade that off for a focus.
17
52000
2000
01:12
(Laughter)
18
54000
3000
01:15
It's a thought. Just a thought.
19
57000
2000
01:18
And there's something nice about slides getting stuck.
20
60000
3000
01:22
And the thing you really hope for
21
64000
2000
01:24
is occasionally they burn up,
22
66000
2000
01:26
which we won't see tonight. So.
23
68000
3000
01:30
With that, let's get the first slide up here.
24
72000
3000
01:33
This, as many of you have probably guessed,
25
75000
3000
01:36
is a
26
78000
2000
01:38
recently emptied beer can in Portugal.
27
80000
3000
01:41
(Laughter)
28
83000
3000
01:44
This -- I had just arrived in Barcelona for the first time,
29
86000
4000
01:48
and I thought --
30
90000
2000
01:50
you know, fly all night, I looked up,
31
92000
2000
01:52
and I thought, wow, how clean.
32
94000
2000
01:54
You come into this major airport, and they simply have a B.
33
96000
4000
01:59
I mean, how nice is that?
34
101000
2000
02:01
Everything's gotten simpler in design,
35
103000
2000
02:03
and here's this mega airport,
36
105000
2000
02:05
and God, I just -- I took a picture.
37
107000
2000
02:07
I thought, God, that is the coolest thing I've ever seen at an airport.
38
109000
3000
02:11
Till a couple months later,
39
113000
2000
02:13
I went back to the same airport --
40
115000
2000
02:15
same plane, I think -- and looked up,
41
117000
2000
02:17
and it said C.
42
119000
2000
02:19
(Laughter)
43
121000
6000
02:25
It was only then that I realized
44
127000
2000
02:27
it was simply a gate that I was coming into.
45
129000
3000
02:30
(Laughter)
46
132000
3000
02:33
I'm a big believer in the emotion of design,
47
135000
4000
02:37
and the message that's sent
48
139000
2000
02:39
before somebody begins to read,
49
141000
2000
02:41
before they get the rest of the information;
50
143000
2000
02:43
what is the emotional response they get to the product,
51
145000
3000
02:46
to the story, to the painting -- whatever it is.
52
148000
4000
02:50
That area of design interests me the most,
53
152000
2000
02:52
and I think this for me is a real clear,
54
154000
2000
02:54
very simplified version
55
156000
2000
02:56
of what I'm talking about.
56
158000
2000
02:58
These are a couple of garage doors painted identical,
57
160000
3000
03:01
situated next to each other.
58
163000
2000
03:03
So, here's the first door. You know, you get the message.
59
165000
4000
03:07
You know, it's pretty clear.
60
169000
2000
03:09
Take a look at the second door and see
61
171000
2000
03:12
if there's any different message.
62
174000
2000
03:14
O.K., which one would you park in front of?
63
176000
2000
03:16
(Laughter)
64
178000
2000
03:18
Same color, same message, same words.
65
180000
2000
03:20
The only thing that's different
66
182000
2000
03:22
is the expression that the individual door-owner here put into the piece --
67
184000
4000
03:26
and, again,
68
188000
2000
03:28
which is the psycho-killer here?
69
190000
2000
03:30
(Laughter)
70
192000
4000
03:34
Yet it doesn't say that; it doesn't need to say that.
71
196000
2000
03:36
I would probably park in front of the other one.
72
198000
3000
03:41
I'm sure a lot of you are aware
73
203000
2000
03:43
that graphic design has gotten a lot simpler in the last
74
205000
2000
03:45
five years or so.
75
207000
2000
03:47
It's gotten so simple that it's already starting to kind of
76
209000
2000
03:49
come back the other way again and get a little more expressive.
77
211000
3000
03:52
But I was in Milan and saw this street sign,
78
214000
2000
03:54
and was very happy to
79
216000
2000
03:56
see that apparently this idea of minimalism
80
218000
2000
03:58
has even been translated by the graffiti artist.
81
220000
4000
04:02
(Laughter)
82
224000
3000
04:05
And this graffiti artist has come along,
83
227000
2000
04:07
made this sign a little bit better, and then moved on.
84
229000
3000
04:10
(Laughter)
85
232000
2000
04:12
He didn't overpower it like they have a tendency to do.
86
234000
3000
04:15
(Laughter)
87
237000
2000
04:17
This is for a book by "Metropolis."
88
239000
4000
04:21
I took some photos, and this is
89
243000
3000
04:24
a billboard in Florida,
90
246000
2000
04:26
and either they hadn't paid their rent,
91
248000
2000
04:28
or they didn't want to pay their rent again on the sign,
92
250000
2000
04:30
and the billboard people were too cheap to tear the whole sign down,
93
252000
3000
04:33
so they just teared out sections of it.
94
255000
2000
04:35
And I would argue that it's possibly more effective
95
257000
2000
04:37
than the original billboard in terms of getting your attention,
96
259000
3000
04:40
getting you to look over that way.
97
262000
2000
04:42
And hopefully you don't stop and buy those awful pecan things -- Stuckey's.
98
264000
5000
04:47
This is from my second book.
99
269000
3000
04:50
The first book is called, "The End of Print,"
100
272000
3000
04:53
and it was done along with a film,
101
275000
2000
04:55
working with William Burroughs.
102
277000
2000
04:57
And "The End of Print" is now in its fifth printing.
103
279000
3000
05:00
(Laughter)
104
282000
5000
05:05
When I first contacted William Burroughs about being part of it,
105
287000
3000
05:08
he said no; he said he didn't believe it was the end of print.
106
290000
4000
05:12
And I said, well, that's fine;
107
294000
2000
05:14
I just would love to have your input on this film and this book,
108
296000
3000
05:17
and he finally agreed to it.
109
299000
2000
05:19
And at the end of the film, he says in this great voice
110
301000
4000
05:23
that I can't mimic but I'll kind of try, but not really, he says,
111
305000
3000
05:26
"I remember attending an exhibition called,
112
308000
3000
05:29
'Photography: The End of Painting.'"
113
311000
4000
05:33
And then he says, "And, of course, it wasn't at all."
114
315000
3000
05:36
So, apparently when photography was perfected,
115
318000
3000
05:39
there were people going around saying,
116
321000
3000
05:42
that's it: you've just ruined painting.
117
324000
2000
05:44
People are just going to take pictures now.
118
326000
3000
05:47
And of course, that wasn't the case.
119
329000
2000
05:49
So, this is from "2nd Sight,"
120
331000
2000
05:51
a book I did on intuition.
121
333000
2000
05:53
I think it's not the only ingredient in design,
122
335000
2000
05:55
but possibly the most important.
123
337000
2000
05:57
It's something everybody has.
124
339000
3000
06:00
It's not a matter of teaching it;
125
342000
2000
06:02
in fact, most of the schools tend to discount intuition
126
344000
2000
06:04
as an ingredient of your working process
127
346000
3000
06:07
because they can't quantify it:
128
349000
2000
06:09
it's very hard to teach people the four steps to intuitive design,
129
351000
5000
06:14
but we can teach you the four steps to a nice business card
130
356000
2000
06:16
or a newsletter.
131
358000
2000
06:18
So it tends to get discounted.
132
360000
2000
06:20
This is a quote from Albert Einstein, who says,
133
362000
4000
06:24
"The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery.
134
366000
4000
06:28
There comes a leap in consciousness --
135
370000
2000
06:30
call it intuition or what you will --
136
372000
3000
06:33
and the solution just comes to you, and you don't know from where or why."
137
375000
4000
06:37
So, it's kind of like when somebody says, Who did that song?
138
379000
2000
06:39
And the more you try to think about it,
139
381000
2000
06:41
the further the answer gets from you,
140
383000
2000
06:43
and the minute you stop thinking about it,
141
385000
2000
06:45
your intuition gives you that answer, in a sense.
142
387000
3000
06:51
I like this for a couple of reasons.
143
393000
2000
06:53
If you've had any design courses, they would teach you you can't read this.
144
395000
3000
06:56
I think you eventually can and, more importantly, I think it's true.
145
398000
3000
06:59
"Don't mistake legibility for communication."
146
401000
4000
07:03
Just because something's legible doesn't means it communicates.
147
405000
3000
07:06
More importantly, it doesn't mean it communicates the right thing.
148
408000
3000
07:09
So, what is the message sent before
149
411000
2000
07:11
somebody actually gets into the material?
150
413000
4000
07:15
And I think that's sometimes an overlooked area.
151
417000
4000
07:19
This is working with Marshall McLuhan.
152
421000
2000
07:21
I stayed and worked with his wife and son, Eric,
153
423000
4000
07:25
and we came up with close to 600 quotes from Marshall
154
427000
5000
07:30
that are just amazing in terms of being ahead of the times,
155
432000
3000
07:33
predicting so much of what has happened
156
435000
2000
07:35
in the advertising, television, media world.
157
437000
4000
07:39
And so this book is called "Probes." It's another word for quotes.
158
441000
4000
07:43
And it's -- a lot of them are never -- have never been published before,
159
445000
4000
07:47
and basically, I've interpreted the different quotes.
160
449000
3000
07:50
So, this was the contents page originally.
161
452000
3000
07:53
When I got done it was 540 pages,
162
455000
2000
07:55
and then the publisher, Gingko Press,
163
457000
2000
07:57
ended up cutting it down considerably:
164
459000
3000
08:00
it's just under 400 pages now.
165
462000
2000
08:02
But I decided I liked this contents page --
166
464000
3000
08:05
I liked the way it looks -- so I kept it.
167
467000
2000
08:07
(Laughter)
168
469000
3000
08:10
It now has no relevance to the book whatsoever,
169
472000
3000
08:13
but it's a nice spread, I think, in there.
170
475000
3000
08:16
(Laughter)
171
478000
2000
08:18
So, a couple spreads from the book:
172
480000
2000
08:20
here McLuhan says,
173
482000
2000
08:22
"The new media are not bridges between Man and Nature; they are Nature."
174
484000
4000
08:29
"The invention of printing did away with anonymity,
175
491000
2000
08:31
fostering ideas of literary fame
176
493000
3000
08:34
and the habit of considering intellectual effort as private property,"
177
496000
4000
08:38
which had never been done before printing.
178
500000
3000
08:43
"When new technologies impose themselves
179
505000
2000
08:45
on societies long habituated to older technologies,
180
507000
3000
08:48
anxieties of all kinds result."
181
510000
3000
08:52
"While people are engaged in creating a totally different world,
182
514000
3000
08:55
they always form vivid images of the preceding world."
183
517000
5000
09:03
I hate this stuff. It's hard to read.
184
525000
3000
09:06
(Laughter)
185
528000
7000
09:13
(Applause)
186
535000
3000
09:16
"People in the electronic age have no possible environment except the globe,
187
538000
7000
09:23
and no possible occupation except information gathering."
188
545000
4000
09:27
That was it. That's all he saw as the options. And not too far off.
189
549000
4000
09:31
So, this is a project for Nine Inch Nails.
190
553000
3000
09:34
And I only show it because it seemed like it got all this relevancy all of a sudden,
191
556000
3000
09:37
and it was done right after 9/11.
192
559000
2000
09:40
And I had recently discovered a bomb shelter
193
562000
4000
09:44
in the backyard of a house I had bought in LA
194
566000
3000
09:47
that the real estate person hadn't pointed out.
195
569000
3000
09:50
(Laughter)
196
572000
4000
09:54
There was some bomb shelter built, apparently in the '60s Cuban missile crisis.
197
576000
4000
09:58
And I asked the real estate guy what it was as we were walking by,
198
580000
3000
10:01
and he goes, "It's something to do with the sewage system."
199
583000
2000
10:03
I was, O.K.; that's fine.
200
585000
1000
10:04
I finally went down there, and it was this old rusted circular thing,
201
586000
4000
10:08
and two beds, and very kind of creepy and weird.
202
590000
3000
10:11
And also, surprisingly, it was done in kind of a cheap metal,
203
593000
3000
10:14
and it had completely rusted through, and water everywhere, and spiders.
204
596000
5000
10:19
And I thought, you know, what were they thinking?
205
601000
2000
10:21
You'd think maybe cement, possibly, or something.
206
603000
2000
10:23
But anyway, I used this for a cover for the Nine Inch Nails DVD,
207
605000
5000
10:28
and I've also now fixed the bomb shelter with duct tape,
208
610000
6000
10:34
and it's ready. I think I'm ready. So.
209
616000
7000
10:43
This is an experiment, really, for a client, Quicksilver,
210
625000
3000
10:46
where we were taking what was a six-shot sequence
211
628000
3000
10:49
and trying to use print as a medium to get people to the Web.
212
631000
3000
10:52
So, this is a six-shot sequence.
213
634000
2000
10:54
I've taken one shot; I cropped it a few different ways.
214
636000
4000
10:58
And then the tiny line of copy says,
215
640000
2000
11:00
If you want to see this entire sequence --
216
642000
2000
11:02
how this whole ride was -- go to the website.
217
644000
3000
11:05
And my guess is that a lot of the surf kids did go to the site
218
647000
4000
11:09
to get this entire picture.
219
651000
3000
11:12
Got no way of tracking it, so I could be totally wrong.
220
654000
3000
11:15
(Laughter)
221
657000
3000
11:18
I don't have the site. It's just the piece itself.
222
660000
3000
11:21
This is a group in New York called the Coalition for a Smoke-free Environment --
223
663000
3000
11:24
asked me to do these posters.
224
666000
2000
11:26
They were wild-posted around New York City.
225
668000
3000
11:29
You can't really -- well, you can't see it at all --
226
671000
2000
11:31
but the second line is really the more kind of payoff, in a sense.
227
673000
3000
11:34
It says, "If the cigarette companies can lie, then so can we." But --
228
676000
4000
11:38
(Laughter)
229
680000
3000
11:41
(Applause)
230
683000
3000
11:44
-- but I did.
231
686000
2000
11:46
These were literally wild-posted all over New York one night,
232
688000
4000
11:50
and there were definitely some heads turning,
233
692000
2000
11:52
you know, people smoking and, "Huh!"
234
694000
2000
11:54
(Laughter)
235
696000
6000
12:00
And it was purposely done to look fairly serious.
236
702000
3000
12:03
It wasn't some, you know, weird grunge type or something;
237
705000
3000
12:06
it looked like they might be real. Anyway.
238
708000
3000
12:09
Poster for Atlantic Center for the Arts, a school in Florida.
239
711000
3000
12:12
This amazes me. This is a product I just found out.
240
714000
3000
12:15
I was in the Caribbean at Christmas,
241
717000
2000
12:17
and I'm just blown away that in this day and age they will still sell --
242
719000
3000
12:20
not that they will sell --
243
722000
3000
12:23
that there is felt a need for people to lighten the color of their skin.
244
725000
3000
12:26
This was either an old product with new packaging,
245
728000
2000
12:28
or a brand-new package, and I just thought,
246
730000
3000
12:31
Yikes! How's that still happening?
247
733000
2000
12:34
I do a lot of workshops all over the world, really,
248
736000
2000
12:36
and this particular assignment was
249
738000
2000
12:38
to come up with new symbols for the restroom doors.
250
740000
3000
12:41
(Laughter)
251
743000
16000
12:57
I felt this was one of the more successful solutions.
252
759000
4000
13:01
The students actually cut them up
253
763000
2000
13:03
and put them up around bars and restaurants that night,
254
765000
3000
13:06
and I just always have this vision of this elderly couple going to use the restroom ...
255
768000
4000
13:10
(Laughter)
256
772000
3000
13:13
I did some work for Microsoft a few years back.
257
775000
3000
13:16
It was a worldwide branding campaign.
258
778000
2000
13:18
And it was interesting to me --
259
780000
2000
13:20
my background is in sociology; I had no design training,
260
782000
3000
13:23
and sometimes people say, well, that explains it --
261
785000
2000
13:25
but it was a very interesting experiment
262
787000
3000
13:28
because there's no product that I had to sell;
263
790000
2000
13:30
it was simply the image of Microsoft they were trying to improve.
264
792000
3000
13:33
They thought some people didn't like them.
265
795000
3000
13:36
(Laughter)
266
798000
4000
13:40
I found out that's very true,
267
802000
2000
13:42
working on this campaign worldwide.
268
804000
3000
13:45
And our goal was to try to humanize them a bit,
269
807000
3000
13:48
and what I did was add type and people to the ad,
270
810000
4000
13:52
which the previous campaign had not had,
271
814000
2000
13:54
and nobody remembered them, and nobody referenced them.
272
816000
2000
13:56
And we were trying to say that,
273
818000
1000
13:57
hey, some of these guys that work there are actually OK;
274
819000
3000
14:00
some of them actually have friends and family,
275
822000
2000
14:02
and they're not all awful people.
276
824000
3000
14:05
And the umbrella campaign was "Thank God it's Monday."
277
827000
4000
14:09
So, we tried to take this --
278
831000
2000
14:11
what was perceived as a negative:
279
833000
2000
14:13
their over-competitiveness, their,
280
835000
2000
14:15
you know, long working hours --
281
837000
2000
14:17
and turn it into a positive and not run from it.
282
839000
2000
14:20
You know: Thank God it's Monday --
283
842000
1000
14:21
I get to go back to that little cubicle, those fake gray walls,
284
843000
3000
14:24
and hear everybody else's conversations f
285
846000
2000
14:26
or 10 hours and then go home.
286
848000
2000
14:28
But anyway, this is one of the ads I was most pleased with,
287
850000
4000
14:32
because they were all elaborately art-directed,
288
854000
3000
14:35
and this one I thought actually felt like the girl was looking at the computer.
289
857000
3000
14:38
It says, "Wonder Around." And then it's a piece of the software.
290
860000
3000
14:41
And this is how the ad ran around the world.
291
863000
2000
14:43
In Germany, they made one small change without checking with me --
292
865000
4000
14:47
nor did they have to, because it was done through agencies --
293
869000
2000
14:49
but see if you can tell the difference.
294
871000
2000
14:51
This is how the ad ran throughout the world;
295
873000
2000
14:53
Germany made one slight change in the ad.
296
875000
4000
14:57
(Laughter)
297
879000
3000
15:01
Now, there's kind of two issues here.
298
883000
2000
15:03
If you're going to put a kid in the ad, pick one that looks alive.
299
885000
4000
15:07
(Laughter)
300
889000
6000
15:13
I just have a feeling this kid's been there for a week, you know.
301
895000
2000
15:15
He's just really hoping that boots up and, you know ...
302
897000
3000
15:18
(Laughter)
303
900000
4000
15:22
And then as the agency explained to me, they said,
304
904000
4000
15:26
"Look, we don't have little green people in our country;
305
908000
3000
15:29
why would we put little green people in our ads, for instance?"
306
911000
3000
15:32
So, I understand their logic. I totally disagree with it;
307
914000
4000
15:36
I think it's a very small-minded approach,
308
918000
2000
15:38
the world is certainly much more global,
309
920000
2000
15:40
and I certainly think the people of Germany
310
922000
2000
15:42
could have handled a little black girl sitting in front of a computer,
311
924000
2000
15:44
though we'll never know.
312
926000
2000
15:46
This is some work from Ray Gun.
313
928000
2000
15:48
And the point of this magazine was to read the articles,
314
930000
3000
15:51
listen to the music, and try to interpret it.
315
933000
2000
15:53
There's no grid, there's no system, there's nothing set up in advance.
316
935000
4000
15:57
This is an opener for Brian Eno,
317
939000
2000
15:59
and it's just kind of my personal interpretation of the music.
318
941000
4000
16:03
This is rockstars talking about teachers they had lusted after in school.
319
945000
5000
16:09
There's a lot of great writing in "Ray Gun."
320
951000
2000
16:11
And I was fortunate to find a photograph of a teacher sitting on some books.
321
953000
4000
16:15
(Laughter)
322
957000
4000
16:19
Article on Bryan Ferry -- just really boring article --
323
961000
2000
16:21
so I set the whole article in Dingbat.
324
963000
3000
16:24
(Laughter)
325
966000
7000
16:31
You could -- you could highlight it; you could make it Helvetica or something:
326
973000
4000
16:35
it is the actual article.
327
977000
2000
16:37
I suppose you could eventually decode it,
328
979000
3000
16:40
but it's really not very well written; it really wouldn't be worthwhile.
329
982000
3000
16:43
(Laughter)
330
985000
2000
16:45
Having done a lot of magazines,
331
987000
1000
16:46
I'm very curious how big magazines handle big stories,
332
988000
4000
16:50
and I was very curious to see how Time and Newsweek would handle 9/11.
333
992000
4000
16:54
And I was basically pretty disappointed
334
996000
2000
16:56
to see that they had
335
998000
2000
16:58
chosen to show the photo we'd already seen a million times,
336
1000000
3000
17:01
which was basically the moment of impact.
337
1003000
2000
17:03
And People magazine, I thought,
338
1005000
2000
17:05
got probably the best shot.
339
1007000
2000
17:07
It's kind of horsey type, but the texture --
340
1009000
4000
17:11
the second plane not quite hitting:
341
1013000
2000
17:13
there was something more enticing,
342
1015000
2000
17:15
if that's the right -- it's not the right word --
343
1017000
2000
17:17
but in this cover than Time or Newsweek.
344
1019000
3000
17:20
But when I got into this magazine,
345
1022000
2000
17:22
there's something kind of disturbing, and this continued.
346
1024000
4000
17:26
On the left we see people dying; we see people running for their lives.
347
1028000
3000
17:29
And on the right we learn that there's a new way to support your breast.
348
1031000
4000
17:33
The coveted right-hand page was not given up to the whole issue.
349
1035000
4000
17:37
Look at the image of this lady --
350
1039000
2000
17:39
who knows what she's going through? --
351
1041000
2000
17:41
and the copy says: "He knows just how to give me goosebumps."
352
1043000
3000
17:44
Yeah, he jumps out of buildings. It's --
353
1046000
2000
17:46
unfortunately, this one works, kind of, as a spread.
354
1048000
4000
17:50
And this continued through the entire magazine.
355
1052000
2000
17:52
It did not let up.
356
1054000
2000
17:54
This says: "One clean fits all." .
357
1056000
2000
17:56
There were a lot of orphans made this day,
358
1058000
3000
17:59
and here's a dead body being brought out.
359
1061000
2000
18:01
It just seems to me possibly even a blank page
360
1063000
3000
18:04
would have been more appropriate.
361
1066000
3000
18:07
And this one I think is possibly the worst:
362
1069000
2000
18:09
two ladies, both facing the same way, both wearing jeans.
363
1071000
4000
18:13
One -- who knows what she's going through;
364
1075000
2000
18:15
the other one is worried about model behavior and milk.
365
1077000
5000
18:20
And --
366
1082000
2000
18:22
I gave a talk in New York a couple months after this,
367
1084000
4000
18:26
and afterwards somebody came up to me and they said that --
368
1088000
3000
18:29
they actually emailed me -- and they said that they appreciated the talk,
369
1091000
4000
18:33
and when they got back to their car,
370
1095000
2000
18:35
they found a note on their car that made them think
371
1097000
2000
18:37
maybe New York was getting back to being New York again after this event --
372
1099000
4000
18:41
it had been a few months.
373
1103000
2000
18:43
This was what they found on their car.
374
1105000
2000
18:45
(Laughter)
375
1107000
11000
19:03
There's very few times you'd be happy to find this on your car,
376
1125000
3000
19:06
but it did seem to indicate that we were coming back.
377
1128000
2000
19:08
This is my desktop.
378
1130000
2000
19:10
Somebody told me today there was this thing called folders,
379
1132000
3000
19:13
but I don't know what they are.
380
1135000
2000
19:15
These are my notes for the talk -- there might be a correlation here.
381
1137000
4000
19:19
We are wrapping up.
382
1141000
2000
19:21
This I saw on the plane, flying in, for hot new products.
383
1143000
3000
19:24
I'm not sure this is an improvement, or a good idea,
384
1146000
4000
19:28
because, like, if you don't spend quite enough time in front of your computer,
385
1150000
3000
19:31
you can now get a plate in the keyboard,
386
1153000
2000
19:33
so there's no more faking it --
387
1155000
4000
19:37
that you don't really sit at your desk all day and eat and work anyway.
388
1159000
4000
19:41
Now there's a plate, and it would be really, really convenient
389
1163000
2000
19:43
to get a piece of pizza, then type a little bit, then ...
390
1165000
3000
19:46
I'm just not sure this is improvement.
391
1168000
3000
19:49
If you ever doubt the power of graphic design,
392
1171000
3000
19:52
this is a very generic sign that literally says, "Vote for Hitler." It says nothing else.
393
1174000
5000
19:57
And this to me is an extreme case
394
1179000
2000
19:59
of the power of emotion, of graphic design,
395
1181000
3000
20:02
even though, in fact, was a very generic poster at the time.
396
1184000
5000
20:07
What's next? What's next is going to be people.
397
1189000
2000
20:09
As we get more technically driven,
398
1191000
2000
20:11
the importance of people becomes more than it's ever been before.
399
1193000
4000
20:15
You have to utilize who you are in your work.
400
1197000
3000
20:18
Nobody else can do that: nobody else can pull from your background,
401
1200000
3000
20:21
from your parents, your upbringing, your whole life experience.
402
1203000
3000
20:24
If you allow that to happen, it's really the only way you can do some unique work,
403
1206000
4000
20:28
and you're going to enjoy the work a lot more as well.
404
1210000
3000
20:31
This is -- I like found art; hand lettering's coming back in a big way,
405
1213000
3000
20:34
and I thought this was a great example of both.
406
1216000
2000
20:36
This lady's advertising for her lost pit bull.
407
1218000
2000
20:38
It's friendly -- she's underlined friendly --
408
1220000
3000
20:41
that's probably why she calls it Hercules or Hercles. She can't spell.
409
1223000
4000
20:45
(Laughter)
410
1227000
3000
20:48
But more importantly,
411
1230000
2000
20:50
she's willing to give you 20 bucks to go find this lost pit bull.
412
1232000
3000
20:53
And I'm thinking, yeah, right,
413
1235000
2000
20:55
I'll go look for a lost pit bill for 20 bucks.
414
1237000
3000
20:58
I have visions of people going down alleyways yelling out for Hercles,
415
1240000
3000
21:01
and you get charged by this thing and you go,
416
1243000
4000
21:05
oh, please be Hercles; please be the friendly one.
417
1247000
2000
21:07
(Laughter)
418
1249000
4000
21:11
I'm sure she never found the dog, because I took the sign.
419
1253000
3000
21:14
(Laughter)
420
1256000
1000
21:15
But I was asked to give a talk at a conference in Sacramento a few years back.
421
1257000
4000
21:19
And the theme was courage, and they asked me to talk
422
1261000
2000
21:21
about how courageous it is to be a graphic designer.
423
1263000
3000
21:24
And I remembered seeing this photograph of my father,
424
1266000
3000
21:27
who was a test pilot, and he told me that
425
1269000
2000
21:29
when you signed up to become a test pilot,
426
1271000
2000
21:31
they told you that there was a 40 to 50 percent chance
427
1273000
2000
21:33
of death on the job.
428
1275000
2000
21:35
That's pretty high for most occupations.
429
1277000
3000
21:38
(Laughter)
430
1280000
2000
21:40
But, you know, the government would make a plane;
431
1282000
2000
21:42
they'd say, go see if that one flies, would you?
432
1284000
2000
21:44
Some of them did; some of them didn't.
433
1286000
3000
21:47
And I started thinking about some of these decisions I have to make
434
1289000
3000
21:50
between, like, serif versus san-serif.
435
1292000
3000
21:53
(Laughter)
436
1295000
3000
21:56
And for the most part, they're not real life-threatening.
437
1298000
4000
22:00
Why not experiment? Why not have some fun?
438
1302000
3000
22:03
Why not put some of yourself into the work?
439
1305000
3000
22:06
And when I was teaching, I used to always ask the students,
440
1308000
2000
22:08
What's the definition of a good job?
441
1310000
2000
22:10
And as teachers, after you get all the answers,
442
1312000
2000
22:12
you like to give them the correct answer.
443
1314000
2000
22:14
And the best one I've heard -- I'm sure some of you have heard this --
444
1316000
3000
22:17
the definition of a good job is:
445
1319000
2000
22:19
If you could afford to -- if money wasn't an issue --
446
1321000
4000
22:23
would you be doing that same work?
447
1325000
2000
22:25
And if you would, you've got a great job.
448
1327000
3000
22:28
And if you wouldn't, what the heck are you doing?
449
1330000
3000
22:31
You're going to be dead a really long time.
450
1333000
2000
22:33
Thank you very much.
451
1335000
1000
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
David Carson - Type designerDavid Carson is the "grunge typographer" whose magazine Ray Gun helped explode the possibilities of text on a page.
Why you should listen
David Carson's boundary-breaking typography in the 1990s, in Ray Gun magazine and other pop-cult books, ushered in a new vision of type and page design -- quite simply, breaking the traditional mold of type on a page and demanding fresh eyes from the reader. Squishing, smashing, slanting and enchanting the words on a layout, Carson made the point, over and over, that letters on a page are art. You can see the repercussions of his work to this day, on a million Flash intro pages (and probably just as many skateboards and T-shirts).
His first book, with Lewis Blackwell and a foreword by David Byrne, is The End of Print, and he's written or collaborated on several others, including the magisterial Book of Probes, an exploration of the thinking of Marshall McLuhan. His latest book is Trek, a collection of his recent work.
David Carson | Speaker | TED.com