Carson began his design career by being very involved the beach and skating culture of Southern California in the mid-1980s. His career as a professional surfer led him to design and publish six issues of a surfing magazine called Beach Culture as well as work on designs for Transworld Skateboarding magazine. These magazine were the first of many projects that have defined Carson’s unique expressionistic typographic style. His interest in alternative typography and non-mainstream photography captured the interest of many graphic designers across the world. Whether they loved it or hated it, they couldn’t deny that his work had merit and a significant impact on young culture.

He continued to develop his unique style for design while he worked on projects for Raygun Magazine, Nine Inch Nails, Kodak, MTV Global, and many other big-name corporations throughout the 1990s. Carson has been quoted on numerous occasions to have said, “The message that the type sends, I feel, is as important as what it is saying. When those work together, you’ve got really strong communication.” In one issue of Raygun he actually ran two articles together simultaneously–probably because he felt they were both talking about the exact same thing. In another article for Beach Culture, he was so taken aback by the lack of inspiration in the article that (after having run through every font on his machine), he decided to set the entire thing with the very last font: Zapf Dingbats.

Carson chooses to use type as an expression to communicate the feeling or message of a piece to the viewer on first contact. Though his work often appears illegible, the strength of his communication and experimentation in graphic design has won him over 170 awards and he is considered the grandmasters of experimental typography to this day. When looking at an array of David Carson’s work, one can immediately see how consistently he applies this sense of expression. Each piece, though uniquely different, seems to work together visually as a collective whole.

In the end, whether the work of the designer is clean, grungy, structured, or wild, a good graphic designer would be wise to follow the advice of David Carson: “Trust your gut. Do what you love. Life’s to important to be taken seriously.” ¹

Related Web Sites:

• David Carson’s Official Web Site
• A Documentary by Hillman Curtis
• Adobe Interview With David Carson

Image Credits:

• “Beach Culture” David Carson. 1990CE.
• “Raygun Magazine” David Carson. 1997CE.
• “Tsunami Relief Poster” David Carson. 2005CE.

Because the primary purpose of graphic design is to pass along information, the usage, methods, and technologies have grown and evolved with society. Ancient civilizations standardized the visual representation of their language resulting in the first alphabets. The need to spread identical information to masses of people resulted in the first printing presses and, as the world grew, designers needed a better way to compile information faster, resulting in Linotype machines (the grandfather of the first word-processor). Each new development in technology opened a new door for graphic designers that required them to not only master the communication of the message itself, but also the medium that message was to be presented on.

This marriage of art and craft required designers to understand topics such as: typography, illustration, color theory and composition in order create visual and verbal elements into an ordered and effective whole.¹ Additional challenges presented to modern designers include linear time-based design (animation and video) as well as non-linear time-based design in the form of the interactive presentations often found on the web. As long as there is information to convey, graphic design will continue to evolve and adapt its ever-growing repertoire to society and the new technologies it develops.

Image Credits

• “Mugshots” Valerie Spencer. 2007CE.
• “Gutenberg Bible” Johannes Gutenberg. c. 1455CE.
• “The Man with the Golden Arm” Saul Bass. 1955CE.