David Carson.
Ungrided
SUMMER 2022
THE BRIEF If you’re new to this project, then I’ll introduce this as my final presentation for my Graphic Design History course with the New School. The brief for this project is to showcase an influential designer from history and discuss some of their important works. I’ve chosen David Carson. Not only has he been a very influential part of my emerging graphic design career, but I thoroughly enjoyed watching his MasterClass. In this presentation you’ll learn about his life as a graphic designer, dive into four of his most
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THE BRIEF
interesting and versatile pieces of work, his creative approach, and his legacy in the field. I wanted to include a section on his creative process since he’s still a relevant designer and we can reference so many recent interviews with him. Hearing how another designer starts their creative process and gets inspiration is always something important to take in. To pay homage to him and my love of editorial design, I’ve structured this presentation as a magazine that you can flip through and interact with. Enjoy the magazine!
6. His Life
14. Nine Inch Nails
10. Ray Gun
16. Dali Museum
Tab
18. Quiksilver
22. His Legacy
24. His Approach
26 Bibliography
ble of Contents.
His Life. Born September 8th, 1955 in Corpus Christi, Texas, David Carson revolutionized visual communication through his unconventional Grunge graphic design in the 1990’s. Carson came into graphic design relatively late in life and has little to no formal design training. He studied Sociology at San Diego State University and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree. He was a competitive surfer - ranking eighth place in the world championship in 1989 - and also taught High School at age 26. It was then when he decided to enroll in a two-week commercial design course at the University of Arizona, and subsequently attended the Oregon College of Commercial Art to study graphic design, which included a three week workshop in Switzerland as a part of his degree. Discovering a new calling in design, he landed a job as a designer at small surfer magazine, Self and Musician, which also entertained his interest in surfing. He then spent four years as a parttime designer at Transworld
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HIS LIFE
Magazine, which enabled him to experiment and paved the way for what would be known as his signature style: the use of unconventional “dirty” type and photographic techniques. He later became art director for the magazine in 1984 and revised its style and layout during his time there, as well as the magazine’s print extension Transworld Snowboarding. In 1989, he became Art Director for magazine Beach Culture, which only lived to see six issues. He continued with Surfer magazine in 1991 - 1992. Even though these positions only lasted a few years, Carson was able to make a name for himself during this time as his designs became recognized further and spread outside of the small design community. In 1992, he was offered a job as Art Director at alternative-music magazine Ray Gun, where he tripled the magazine’s circulation and attracted a wide range of readership. Although the
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HIS LIFE
It fascinated the young readership, so big corporations began to notice him.
covers of Ray Gun were often radical and bold, it fascinated the young readership, thus big corporations began to notice him and hire him for both print and digital advertisements. He left the magazine in 1995 and started his own firm “David Carson Design” and went on to work with major clients like Nike, Pepsi Cola, Ray Bans, Levi Strauss, and MTV Global to name a few. Additionally he published a comprehensive collection of his own works and experimental designs; The End
of Print: The Graphic Design of David Carson, 2nd Sight, Trek, and Fotografiks. He named and designed the adventure lifestyle magazine Blue, in 1997. Carson’s cover design for the first issue was selected as one of the “top 40 magazine covers of all time” by the American Society of Magazine Editors. Carson received an AIGA medal in 2014.
Ray Gun
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RAY GUN
art direction 1992 - 95.
Many argue Caron’s most renowned work was done during his time as art director for Ray Gun magazine, an alternative rock n’ roll magazine founded in 1992 . He collaborated with many photographers during his three year tenure, and shocked viewers with radical and bold covers. Carson worked with photographer Chris Cuffaro on the spread “Morrissey: The Loneliest Monk” for the magazine in 1994. Here he uses unusual photographic cropping and deconstructed headlines to convey the musician’s romanticism and mystery. He worked with photographer John Ritter on, “Is Techno Dead?” in 1994, using typographic spatial intervals joined with computermanipulated photos in a rhythmic melody of white and dark shapes. Here he is exploring reverse leading, extreme forced justification,
text columns jammed together with no gutter. You see text columns the width of the page (and, on at least one occasion, a double-page spread), text with minimal value contrast between type and the image or color underneath, and text columns set in curved or irregular shapes. He repeatedly uses unconventional treatment of images with unnatural cropping and strange photography angles, with little
Ray Gun 14 was the first magazine he sent to the printer as electronic files.
Ray Gun to no type hierarchy. Although Carson was viewed as the epitome of the computer revolution, Ray Gun 14 was the first magazine he sent to the printer as electronic files. Before that he had generated elements by computer, then prepared camera ready art on boards. During this period, David’s work began to move outside of the graphic design world into mainstream culture. At an MIT communication forums discussion Ray Gun is described as having “... many of the formal features of Avant Pop as observed by Larry McCaffery -- collage, improvisation, high-impact visuals, a kinetic look and feel -- have long been staple’s of Ray Gun’s design” Carson was heavily influenced by film and video, as the hierarchical and regularized structure of page design in his work yielded to a shifting, kinetic spatial environment where type and image overlap, fade, and
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RAY GUN
blur. This can be seen through Ray Gun’s designs, how it seamlessly emulates digital media although print being a two dimensional art form which was groundbreaking for the time. Carson consciously made his pages cinematic by letting articles and headlines flow from spread to spread and by wrapping pictures the edge of the page onto the other side.
Collage, improvisation, high-impact visuals, a kinetic look and feel -have long been staples of Ray Guns design.
art direction 1992 - 95.
Nine Inch Nails
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NINE INCH NAILS
photography and art direction 1998.
Carson was commissioned for the CD albumin design and photography for Nine Inch Nails “the fragile” album, as well as special-edition companion album. This was one of his highest-profile works of the 90’s. When Trent Reznor, lead vocalist and song-writer, recruited him to do the album cover art, which was the follow up to the blockbuster album The Downward Spiral - Carson wasn’t even a fan of the music. Nonetheless, his work is trademark Carson with its blurred images and typography, but it also has a restraint since the lyrics are somewhat legible in some instances. He distorts the band’s logo and uses images that again challenges the readability of type and visuals - does this to translate the emotions of the band’s lyrics. He uses odd type justification and almost no type hierarchy to distinguish song titles from lyrics - some text is even layered on top of each other. Caron helped direct a commercial for the MTV Music Awards with the band in his studio in New York as a part of this project.
He challenges the viewers readability of type and visuals.
The Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida commissioned David Carson to rebrand the entire new building that houses the largest collection of Dali’s work, which was set to open in 2011. David was responsible for the complete brand identity work and wayfinding including all signage, graphics, and broadcast elements and assets. A distinct brand identity, Carson plays into the fluid and illogical scenes of Surrealist art by deconstructing words, and playing with angles and scale. Surrealism began in the 1930’s, after World War I, where artists adopted this way of thinking and searched for intuition and dreams in the conscious realm. Here, type feels like a composition, flowing as letters connect to one another in unexpected ways, forming a puzzle of the subconscious mind.
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DALI MUSEUM
Carson plays on the fluid illogical scenes of Surrealist art.
The Dali Museum
brand identity 2011.
Quiksilver
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QUIKSILVER
pro new york 2011.
David has done several projects with surf apparel brand, Quiksilver including championship event advertisements, surfboard and merchandise lines, and even an announcement for their headquarters in France. Carson started on a big collaboration with New York artists George Bates, Michael Lotenero, and Justin Kauffmann, for Quiksilver Pro New York in September of 2011. This championship tour was the first-ever event on the east
coast, with a one million dollar prize. This was monumental, as something of this scale had never been attempted for a pro surfing contest before. The brief was to come up with an original look and feel for the contes and the brief was left very open-ended, other than to say they were currently using “stains and textures” in their ads. David dissected assets like the handlettered type created by Bates, and art from all three of the artists, and photos of surfers
Quiksilver
pukas 2010. and the event location — experimenting with different layouts and compositions. There were many iterations, Carson pulled apart George’s designs to come up with the ideal balance, and the team ultimately sent100 ideas to the Quiksilver - unfortunately very little was used in the end. David collaborated with Quiksilver again within the same year, alongside Pukas surfboards in Europe for a line of custom designed luggage, backpacks, surfboards, wallets and notebooks, which were available at over 600 stores. The line has a distinct color palette using red, white, and black and is a little different from the traditional “Carson style”. The design almost looks like Japanese calligraphy using ink and ink wash, which is articulately painted on these surf boards to explore a bolder side of Carson and the brand.
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QUIKSILVER
His Legacy.
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HIS LEGACY
During the late 80’s and 90’s, Grunge culture, philosophies, and aesthetics were on the rise. With the blossom of the digital era and working within the limitations of design programs, there was an equally important counter reaction to this digital age, which was seen in Grunge or Deconstruction styles. Deconstructionism was aiming to “expose the glue that holds Western culture together” said by Edward Fella, and Carson’s work fell in-line with Deconstructionist’s beliefs, in that designers were to call attention to our expectations of communication structures through their creative work. He was named “the godfather of grunge typography” which he employed perpetually in his magazines, winning hundreds of awards for this style. His designs were seemingly chaotic layering type and images together - forcing the viewer to decipher which content is most important. Layouts would burst out of
Editorial layouts dont have to stick to the rules around image placement, consistent typography, or persistent flowing copy. their grids and flowed to and past the page margins. Carson became quite controversial in the early 1990’s. While he served as a powerful inspiration for many young designers, he angered many others who believed he was crossing the line between order and chaos. Carson’s typography was decried and denounced, but as he and others pushed their work to the edge of legibility, designers discovered that many readers were more resilient than they had previously assumed, noting that messages could be read and understood under
less than ideal circumstances. Carson’s work made designers realize that editorial layouts didn’t have to stick to the rules around image placement, consistent typography, or persistent flowing copy issue after issue. For some people, it was Carson’s self-confessed ignorance of any rules for producing graphic design that enabled them to produce original and striking designs. Albert Watson stated, “the disorganized use of his typography has its own purpose, such as the each stroke of a painter’s brush evoke different emotion, imagery and idea, so does Carson’s designs possess such attributes.” All in all, Carson believes one should not mistake legibility for communication, because while many highly legible traditional printed messages offer little visual appeal to readers, more expressionist designs can attract and engage them. variety of cultural channels and representational surfaces.
clients. In his MasterClass he discusses breaking the grid and how to make an impact. He notes in his MasterClass, “If it feels like anybody could have just typed it in, then you really don’t need designers. Did you look at the space between the letters? IF IT SHOULD BE IN CAPS? If you should find something TALL or CONDENSED? Make those decisions, don’t get lazy. If it’s readable, it’s okay, but you won’t have the most fun doing it, or do your best work. Look at the obvious, basic categories of fonts— bold, thick, serif, sans serif, italic, non-italic, CAPS, lowercase—to see if something strikes you as feeling right for the message and works with He was the first graphic the other information on the designer to be given a page, like a photograph or Masterclass where he explains graphs.”.Carson believes in the thinking behind his greatest doing what feels right and works for Quiksilver, Nine Inch good as a graphic designer. Nails, and countless other Self-taught, in an admirable grid-free way, David Carson is unafraid to speak his mind with a funny personality. He’s certainly not known for following the rules, especially his anti-grid aesthetic. His ethos is “Why Not”? Why not run type vertically instead of horizontally on the page? Why not collage together scraps of paper you’ve torn from posters around the world? Why not use mildly illegible typography? His work is characterized by chaotic typography and pattern it embodies, disarray of photos overlapping each other - seemingly meaningless at the surface, but actually holds a much larger meaning.
His Approach 24.
HIS APPROACH
h.
BIBLIOGRAPHY designed by CHLOE RICHTER Barnard, Malcolm. 2005. Graphic Design As Communication. London: Taylor & Francis Group. Accessed July 31, 2022. ProQuest Ebook Central.
Kirschenbaum, Matthew G. The Other End of Print: David Carson, Graphic Design, and the Aesthetics of Media, MIT Communications Forum, http:// web.mit.edu/comm-forum/ legacy/papers/kirsch.html.
Carson, David. “Masterclass: Meggs, Philip B., and Alston David Carson Teaches Graphic W. Purvis. Meggs’ History of Design.” MasterClass Online Graphic Design. John Wiley & Classes, MasterClass, https:// www.masterclass.com/classes/ Sons, Inc., 2016. david-carson-teachesStinson, Liz. “Inside the graphic-design. Design: Graphic Designer David Carson Is Very into Carson, David. “Quiksilver.” Swatches.” HODINKEE, David Carson Design, http:// HODINKEE, 23 June 2021, www.davidcarsondesign. https://www.hodinkee.com/ com/t/clients/quiksilver/. articles/graphic-designerCouldwell, Andrew. “Art david-carson-is-very-intoDirecting the Quiksilver Pro.” swatches. Club of the Waves, 4 Sept. 2011, https://clubofthewaves.com/ feature/art-directing-thequiksilver-pro/. Kan, Eugene. “David Carson X Pukas X Quiksilver 2011 Spring Preview.” HYPEBEAST, HYPEBEAST, 13 Nov. 2010, https://hypebeast.com/2010/11/ david-carson-x-pukas-xquiksilver-2011-spring-preview.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY