RESEARCH AND INFORMATION
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David
Carson is a Texas born graphic designer mostly known for his use of
experimental typography. During his early years Carson worked as a
sociology professor but put most pride in his professional surfing
career, ranking ninth in the world during his college days.
In
the early eighties Carson worked as a teacher for the Torrey Pines High
School in San Diego but soon he found himself attending a two week
course in commercial design. Carson had found his new calling and spent a
bit of time as a part time art director for a surfing magazine and then
part time at a skateboarding magazine called Transworld which allowed
him to experiment and create his signature ‘grunge’ style dirty type
combined with unconventional pictures.
Carson
became the art director of the magazine Beach Culture in 1989 and even
though the journal only produced six issues until it folded Carson
received over one hundred and fifty awards in design. David Carson was
hired as the director of Ray Gun Magazine in 1992.In Ray Gun, an
American alternative rock and roll magazine, Carson’s “layouts featured
distortions or mixes of 'vernacular' typefaces and fractured imagery,
rendering them almost illegible. Indeed, his maxim of the 'end of print'
questioned the role of type in the emergent age of digital design” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Carson_(graphic_designer). Within three years the circulation of Ray Gun tripled thanks to Carson’s innovative ideas. David
Carson has been named ‘the father of grunge’ for the work he had done
with his dirty type. He was immersed in the hippy bohemian culture of
California and had found his bliss.
After
taking leave of Ray Gun in 1995 Carson founded his own design company
which holds offices in both California and New York. This is also the
same year that Carson publishes his first book the “End of Print”
selling over 200,000 copies and printed in five languages this became
the best selling graphic design book in the world. The “End of Print”
features various one-man exhibitions throughout Europe and Latin America, Asia and Australia.
In
2000 Carson opened a small private studio in South Carolina and only
four years later became the Creative Director at Gibbes Museum of Art
located in Charleston, South Carolina, the same area as his studio.
Carson’s design firm continues to flourish and has had major clients
such as Ray Ban and Pepsi Cola. He is attached to his creations; his
work is different from other designers at the time. Carson created a
type of work that allows the viewer to become immersed in the art, “ I.D.
magazine chose Carson for their list of "America's most innovative
designers", a feature in Newsweek magazine said of Carson "he changed
the public face of graphic design"” (http://www.davidcarsondesign.com/?dcdc=top/s).
Carson
has achieved numerous design awards including Designer of the year and
Master of Typography. In 2004 Carson received the great recognition of
being the most famous graphic designer on the planet by the London Creative Review magazine. Recently
Carson has decided to branch out into film and television, directing
commercials and videos. He made a short film with the same title of his
first publication, “The End of Print”. He appears in others work and
continues to keep his firm running. There is a documentary on Carson
that is currently being filmed and looks to include much of Carson’s
work along with a pleasing soundtrack.
Looking
at David Carson’s work is truly an experience. Your eye focuses on what
is most important, like the product brand name, and then moves around
the work to focus on the other aspects of design and color. Posters
created for the tsunami benefit in 2005 has you center on the text which
is separated to seem like a letter is missing in the word help. Its
quite creative, youre eye visually adds an extra ‘l’ to make hell
.Carson’s posters made for the Obama campaign convey all the hope and
change Obama had hoped for in the campaign. His text and placement
makes the poster easy to look at but also incredibly fascinating to the
viewer with letters that can interchangable with a consistant organic
style.
Personally
I believe that Carson’s work with Ray Gun Magazine is his most
successful and creative pieces. The grungy text that jump started an era
of design still stays as a common design technique today and I think it
is beautiful. The text conveys a feeling which is what I believe a lot
of designers try to achieve. Ray Gun not only started David Carson as a
world phenomena but shaped Carsons work. Carsons designs at that time
were new to people and really sent an image of grunge eighties style
simply through text. Everyone else is simply trying to attain what
Carson was able to do and still does today.
