David Carson

David Carson is an American graphic designer and art director born in 1954. Carson is best known for his innovative magazine design, and use of experimental typography. He was the art director for the magazine Ray Gun, in which he employed much of the typographic and layout style for which he is known. In particular, his widely imitated aesthetic defined the so-called "grunge typography" era.

This new style of grunge typography combined influences of Internantional Typographic style (Swiss Design), New Wave and Punk. His work was characterised with random positioning of text, use of hand drawn typography, collage style placement of images and grungy dirty look. His layouts featured distortions or mixes of 'vernacular' typefaces and fractured imagery, rendering them almost illegible.

Carson fame as an artist grew from his works in Ray Gun magazine. In 1995 he left Ray Gun magazine and moved to New York city were he founded his own studio, David Carson Design. Carson started to attract major clients and was doing work for Pepsi Cola, Ray Ban (orbs project), Nike,Microsoft, Budweiser, Giorgio Armani, NBC, American Airlines and Levi Strauss Jeans, and later worked for a variety of new clients, includingAT&T Corporation, British Airways, Kodak, Lycra, Packard Bell, Sony,Suzuki, Toyota, Warner Bros., CNN, Cuervo Gold, Johnson AIDS Foundation, MTV Global, Princo, Lotus Software, Fox TV, Nissan,quiksilver, Intel, Mercedes-Benz, MGM Studios and Nine Inch Nails. He, along with Tina Meyers, designed the "crowfiti" typeface used in the filmThe Crow: City of Angels.

David Carson style of Grunge typography was an influential style that till to this date is being used by graphic designers. The grunge design also was the style were the graphic design tools were changed to accommodate new technologies and this make the grunge style one of the pioneers for digital application to graphic design. Using the computer as an artistic tool.

References

http://amandafa27.blogspot.com/2008/12/david-carson-essay.html



http://www.davidcarsondesign.com/



http://www.kenyaferrand.com/pics/web/css_layout/david.html





Accessed 25/1/2014 1600