Carson Lev is kind of like your wise, cool uncle who sits you down and gives you advice about The Ways of the World -- if your uncle had been doing game-changing medical and automotive design for the past 30 years.
The most passionate presentation of the conference so far, Carson's 40 minute talk was a whirlwind tour through a bizarre career, including several major medical device stints, a long collaboration with Chip Foose at Foose Design, and working on a treadmill for astronauts.
The advice, heavily directed at the large contingent of students in the crowd, revolved around the conference theme of symbiosis, noting that it comes in several flavors, from Mutual on down to Parasitic. Evaluating his many jobs in terms of which type of symbiosis each described, Lev drew special attention to the endless ways in which non-design skills and knowledge can advance a design career. It's been said before in many places, but this time hit especially hard. A few choice quotes:
"If I made pretty pictures they [project engineers] couldn't understand, they would dismiss me as an artist. So I work in multiple senses: I think in a design sense, but I communicate in a business sense."
"Everything you use will become useful at some point."
"If you don't understand something, it's going be used as a weapon against you at some point."
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