PRESS
DAVID CARSON ED BENGUAIT A MAN OF LETTERS 30 UNDER 30 A DIVIDED HOUSE
DAVID CARSON changeing the public face of graphic design
Photograph by Dhiraj Singh / Bloomberg via Getty
By Meera Subramanian
Whilst being a designer, and an art director, graphic design was not Carson’s primal career path. He graduated with a degree in sociology and started teaching while training to be a professional surfer. He started experimenting with graphic design in the early 1980s. With surfing being a general part of Carson’s life, it has played a great role on his design career. It is one of the reasons for his motivation and success to direct and design various surfing, snowboarding and skateboarding magazines, websites, ads and products like Quiksilver, Burton, SURFportugal, Besides the various magazines David Carson has designed, he became well known for his experimental, deconstructive typographic designs and art direction for Ray Gun magazine. The magazine’s contents were music artists, pop culture, lifestyle, advertising, celebrity icons, etc., and so, Carson was successful in his aim to design it accordingly. David Carson became best known for his designs for Ray Gun which was the peak of his design career and he started attracting many
photos from his earlier work and computer manipulated imagery in order to visually present 400 pages, each page containing one “probe” – Marshall McLuhan’s aphorisms, quotes from his books, lectures, articles, etc. What makes this partnership so interesting and unique is that ‘this collaboration creates a reciprocal and complementary tension between McLuhan’s words and Carson’s images’, according to the editors of the What I admire most about David Carson is how he goes out of his way to experiment and to take risks and thus, creates these unique designs. By breaking all the rules of graphic design he gains major success in his career and inspires and influences graphic designers worldwide, who admire, follow and imitate him. By taking risks without being afraid to do so, he gets rewarded by receiv
Ben Carson
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ne of the most important things about Graphic Design and Design in general is style. David Carson is a great example for a designer who has developed his own unique style which is so well trained, that anyone can tell a Carson design at a first glance. He was one of the most popular and influential graphic designers of the 1990s. He was imitated by designers throughout the world and his style defined the grunge typography era.
Another example for a successful project in David Carson’s work is The Book of Probes. Design Legend David Carson Brings Marshall McLuhan’s “Probes” to Life. – Maria Popova, brainpickings.com, 17 February 2012. All in all, Ray Gun was an American alternative rock-and-roll magazine, first published in 1992 in Santa Monica, California. Led by founding art director David Carson, along with founding editor Neil Feineman, Ray Gun explored experimental magazine typographic design and unique angles on the pop cultural currents of the 90s. The editorial content was framed in a chaotic, abstract style.
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David Carson is an internationally acclaimed graphic designer who hit hard in the early nineties with Beach Culture and RayGunmagazines. His work was intuitive, daring, loose. He revolutionised the font game and turned traditional typographical design theory on its head. And by fusing sophisticated, conceptual ideas with child-like simplicity, he became an art star in a medium that’s generally considered background. His first book, with Lewis Blackwell The end of print, is the top-selling graphic design book of all time. Newsweek wrote that he “changed the public face of graphic design.” London-based creative review called him “the most famous graphic designer on the planet”. And David Byrne, Nine Inch Nails and Bush contracted his unique eye to design their wares, as did Pepsi,
I returned to Southern California when I was done teaching, where I had secured a job with Nancy Katin [Katin surf trunks]. I worked for a few weeks, not positive if I was really going to the graphic design workshop or not. Finally I told my boss, Nancy Katin, that I needed two weeks off in the middle of the summer to attend this workshop. She told me if I left for the workshop, I would not have a job when I returned. That made the decision a bit more difficult, but somehow I felt I had to try this graphic design thing. And I did. Luckily, I had a very cool, funny and good guy instructor, Jackson Boelts. It’s hard to say if I would have been as interested had I had a loser teacher. But at the end of those two weeks it was so clear to me: That’s what I wanted to do
“Which is to say that there is a lot of chance and chaos theory in Carson’s work, but somehow the chips or the cards or the drops of coffee fall in perfect disorder.” HUCK: You were a teacher before you were a graphic designer. How did you make the shift? I was teaching my first year at a strange little cult religious school in Oregon. I had grades one through twelve all day, in one room. When they had a question to ask they either raised an American flag or a Christian flag, depending on what kind of question it was. Strange experience! Anyway, I got a postcard announcing a two-week graphic design workshop during the summer, and it described what they would be studying. It was for high school seniors. I read the description and thought, ‘Wow, that’s a profession? You can be creative, have fun, make stuff and get paid?’ So I called and asked the school, University of Arizona in Tucson, if I could come, and they
What do you consider to be your career highlights? In terms of work I would really say Beach Culture magazine, for a number of different reasons. It was the first time all my earlier training had a chance to come together. I had done Transworld Skateboarding, I had moved to the East Coast to do Musician and Billboard, and then after I got fired for the design being too radical. I’d heard that Surfer Publications were talking about doing this more experimental magazine, and I flew out to California to interview for the job. Beach Culture was never intended to be a surf magazine. It was loosely hung on this idea that people at the beach also enjoy other things — it was an attitude. It was myself and the editor, Neil Feineman, in the back of the Surfer offices, literally in the warehouse, just doing our thing. I look
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back now and it was so pure. I was living with it around the clock. We did every issue like it was our last. I was so broke I was scrounging for gas or lunch money half the time, but it didn’t matter. We were experimenting. My thing had yet to take off at that time, but the issues still hold up well. They shut it down about a year before the whole street culture thing kicked in, which was a shame. And then much later the work I did for Nine Inch Nails, packaging and posters and everything. Trent Reznor was a really interesting person to work with. We hit it off, just a great working relationship. Just the idea that you could interpret somebody’s music and lyrics in a way that they’re happy with was really satisfying. remember getting an email from Trent when we
WHAT’S HE DOING NOW Currently calling New York his base of operations, Carson was born in Corpus Christi, Texas and spent much of his early life in southern California where he was a high school teacher before becoming a designer. Ingrained within the surfing sub-culture of southern California, Carson started experimenting with graphic design during the mid 1980s. Not only a designer, in 1989 he has qualified as the 9th best surfer in the world. His interest in the world of surfing gave him the opportunities to experiment with design, working on several different publications related to the profession. Transworld Skateboarding, Beach Culture, How Magazine and RayGun were among the primary publications on which he worked. However, it was RayGun where he gained perhaps the most recognition and was able to share his design style, characterized by “dirty” type which adheres to none of the standard practices of typography and is often illegible, with the widest audience. After the success of RayGun, and press from the New York Times and Newsweek, he formed his own studio. David Carson Design was founded in 1995 and is still home to Carson and his work .
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Type Tips
13 Typographic Fau Pas Avoid bad punctuation and Type Crimes at your new job, Who needs that type of attention?
1. Two spaces between sentences. Repent of this sin by using only one space. 2. Dumb quotes instead of smart quotes. 3. Dumb apostrophe instead of a smart apostrophe. 4. Apostrophes always face this way: Pot o’ gold. They never face this way: Pot ‘o gold. 5. Failing to tuck periods/commas inside quotes marks. Immoral: “I love type so much”, she confessed. Chaste: “I love type so much,” she testified. 6. Failing to kern display type. Unseemly gaps can impede readability and be distracting to the reader. Adjusting the spacing between letters will assuage your guilt. 7. Using a hyphen instead of an en dash. Use an en dash to indicate a duration of time instead of the word “to”: the 8–10 commandments, not 8-10 commandments. 8. Using two hyphens instead of an em dash. An em dash signifies a change in thought—or a parenthetical phrase—within a sentence.
9. Too many consecutive hyphens. It is sinful to have more than two hyphens on consecutive lines of type, and even that should be avoided. 10. Large amounts of bodytext in uppercase letters. IT BECOMES REALLY DIFFICULT TO READ. 11. Large amounts of reversed type 12. Too much positive tracking 13. Using too many faces and weights
Heroes
A man of letters A
mericas Most Prolific typographer and lettering artist. Benguiat has crafted over 600 typface designs, here are just a few of his gems... Article continues on page63
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Ed Benguiat Originals ITC Barcelona ITC Benguiat ITC Benguiat Gothic ITC Bookman ITC Caslon No. 224 ITC Century Handtooled ITC Edwardian Script ITC Modern No. 216 ITC Panache ITC Souvenir ITC Tiffany
ITC Barcelona
ITC Avant Garde
Collaborations: ITC Avant Garde (condensed styles only) ITC Bauhaus (with Victor Caruso) ITC Cheltenham Handtooled (with Tony Stan) ITC Korinna (with Victor Caruso) ITC Lubalin Graph (with Herb Lubalin) Ed Benguiat Font Collection: Ed Brush Ed Gothic Ed Interlock Ed Roman Ed Script PL Benguiat Frisky
Ed Benguiat Born Ephram Edward Benguiat, October 27, 1927) is an American typographer and lettering artist. He has crafted over 600 typeface designs including Tiffany, Bookman, Panache, Souvenir, Edwardian Script, and the self-titled Benguiat and Benguiat Gothic.
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30 30 UNDER
Top Young Graphic Designers To Watch For
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Xavier Peña
X
avier is a young designer who is making big contributions to the wolrd of graphic design. Besides being the creator of Press magazine(the magazine you are reading) he is also a prolific designer and illustrator. Xavier is part of a graphic design studio based in longisland that produce a wide range of posters, magazines, logos and all things design. Every one in the studio is under 30 years old and making contributions to the artistic community. Xavier was rasied in the town of New Rochelle and born in New York 6/16/97. he discovered his intrest in the design during his highschool years and has been working in hopes of doing better work everyday. in an interview with xavier where we asked him about his views on art he said ” As far as I know no one has talent, myself included. When you want to be good at something you have to work for it. Creating things, yourself is a process of hard work and practice, especially if you want it to look nice. This process is a huge part of who I am and what I want to accomplish. Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying I’ve reached the pinnacle of art at this point in my life, and this isn’t a “how to get good quick” type of book. What I’m saying is that I enjoy the process of trying to get to the top and believe that anyone can do it. Making beautiful things isn’t just for people who would call themselves artists. It’s for everyone to try and succeed in. When I was younger doing artistic things was the furthest thing from my mind. I was told I had natural ability for math and science so was groomed to do that. When I got a bit older I took an interest in art. I loved the history and the many great works of art left an impression on me. “I want to make things like that” I decided. Those close to me told me I probably couldn’t do it, and that it wasn’t where my strengths lied but I was determined and was able to prove a good amount of them wrong. Anyone can create what they want to they just have to try and enjoy the process of learning and growing”
Type Familys Old Style Garamond
(15th-17th century)
Minimal variation between thick and thin, Small X-hights, In the round strokes, the stress is diagonal, or oblique, as their designs mimic the hand-held angle of the pen nibs of the scribes.
Transitional Baskerville (18th century)
A greater contrast between thick and thin stokes, Wider, gracefully larger x-height, Vertical stress in rounded strokes.
Modern
Slab Serif
Sans Serif
Bodoni
Century Expanded (19th century)
(19th-20th century)
Extreme contrast between thick and thin strokes, hairline serifs without bracketing, small x-height, vertical stress in rounded strokes.
Minimal variation of thick and thin strokes, heavy serifs with squaredoff ends, large x-heights, vertical stress in rounded strkes.
little or no variation between thick and thin strokes, lack of serifs, larger x-height, no stress in rounded strokes.
(late 18th century)
Helvetica
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new type
Typefaces or Fonts?
Some new designs with an old twist MONOSPACED FONT A monospaced font, also called a fxed-pitch width or non-proportional font, is a font whose letters and characters each occupy the same amount of horizontal space. This contrasts to variable-width fonts, where the letters differ in size to one another. The frst monospaced typefaces were designed for typewriters, which could only move the same distance forward with each letter typed.
MARKER HAND MY MONOSPACED UNICASE TYPEFACE AND FONT
ABCDEFG HIJKLMNOP QRSTUVWXYZ 1234567890 !" designed by xavier pena
new type
Typefaces or Fonts?
Some new designs with an old twist UNICASE FONT A unicase font is one that has no case, the glyps from upper and lower case are combined to form one alphabet. It is believed that all alphabets were once unicase. Bradbury Thompson’s plan for simplifying and improving our alphabet was, “Alphabet 26”, his project to combine upper and lowercase letters into one consistent set of letters, eradicated most of the lowercases, except for a, e, m and n.
my monospaced unicase typeface font
ABcdef g h i j kl mn o p q r s tuvwx yz
Paper Thin My Monospace, Unicase Typography and FonT
aBcdeFghiJklm nopqrsTuvwxyz 1234567890 ,.!?
Designed by Jennifer Brown
“What font is used on the Absolut Vodka bottles”? It seems that just about everyone is using the word “font” when they are referring to a typeface. “Fonts” and “typefaces” are different things. Graphic designers choose typefaces for their projects but use fonts to create the finished art. Typefaces are designs like Baskerville, Gill Sans or Papyrus. Type designers create typefaces. Today they use software programs like Fontographer or Font Lab to create the individual letters. A few still draw the letters by hand and then scan them into a type design
Diana Chetnik