David Carson - Graphic Guru

I was introduced to david carson by one of my student. I LOVE it when students introduce me to new interesting things. Sometime being busy with making a living and all that mortal affairs  means you have a little less time to explore new things, and you will not believe it but there was a time, not that long ago, when you couldn’t just google something and in 0.3 seconds the whole world is downloaded with HD video on your screen….

And david carson was the kind of designer that you should be introduced to by your students. He was the most contemporary designer for the generation that witnessed the end of print. He was brave, he was interesting, he wasn’t too 'hi-brow' and he actually managed to create a personal vision, that whether I like it or not, did change the face of alternative print forever.

Now that is something I have a bit of a problem with. Carson wasn’t a conceptual designer, no matter how he might seem to be one. He was just doing "his thing" creating single one-off pieces of art.

How is that a bad thing? Well, carson was talented and had a perfect feel both for graphics and art from one side and a natural "feel" for fonts and spacing. That's why his work is so outstanding , sometimes even monumental in its originality. He was an artist who found his calling in magazines and the surfing young atmosphere.
Still not clear how that is a bad thing? Carson influenced thousands of readers who suddenly had a completely different visual experience when opening a magazine.

Carson influenced thousand of young designers who saw his amazing compositions, his strange positioning of images and written words, his font manipulations were sublime , his retouching of images to fit his view of the page, of the world, was brilliant. He broke every rule and disregarded any industry standard as the only important thing was his vision, and he felt in every fiber of his being if the headline is in the right place or should it be tilted and pushed to the side, he just felt it. He was a true artist.

STILL not clear how that is a bad thing? All you have to do is just take a look at all the designers that tried to follow carson and gave us over a decade of dead marketing-young polished-dirt crap that was trying to be art but was nothing more that idiots enjoying the fact there are no more rules, where everything goes in the hope people will think it is sophisticated and clever, it's for young people, you don’t understand, this is how it is supposed to be.
Well no. it isn’t.