Design and writing are very similar. For example, if a sentence doesn’t sound right, it won’t look right either. A sweet sentence written in an ugly font is like a streak of poop across a pretty face. I think I’d find a writing assignment as equally exciting as a design challenge – I’d study references (both visual and factual) the same in both cases. I’d search my imagination for good ideas. I’d sketch an outline, build a base, add and edit.
Design and writing once gave birth to photojournalism. Photojournalism - get paid to absorb an environment, capture that experience with a camera, and write about it. I’d be good at that. No, I’d be damn good at that. Photojournalism is that day dream job that pulls on me from time to time. It started after I bought an old 35mm Cannon AE-1 at a thrift store in San Luis Obispo. No, it was earlier - a magazine. Mummies, topless women, dinosaurs, elephants, ship wrecks, cannibals, rain forests, volcanoes and tornadoes. National Geographic: every boy’s dream job.
But could I disappear into a life of hotel rooms, fast girls, passports, airports and lenses? Embrace that little wampire in me? Follow Hunter's lead? Trade in my Subaru for an all-American iron horse with a fiery anus. Walk through exotic lands with a pair of aviators and a bandanna of ether. Meet strange people. Publish my experiences for the Others to read. Could I get an interview with the one employer in the United States seeking a full time photojournalist? Probably not. Maybe I’ll move to Dublin. Drink beer and herd sheep. Collect rain water.
