Ah, cut the guy some slack. You'd be surprised at exactly what sort of studying is involved in typography (there is ALOT). It's a lot more difficult than it looks and there's many aspects of letterforms that one has to study. He's just taking a queue from someone who knows how to do it to explore their thinking. No harm in that.
However, schultz, I'd still like to see work that shows you understand the rules, not just work that shows you've broken the rules without really understanding what they are (or even what they are?).
Don't do this again. Do something that follows the rules first :P