David Carson When David Carson

David Carson

When David Carson graduated from San Diego State University -- with "honors and distinction" -- he was not just a young man holding a BFA degree in sociology. He was a world-class surfer, ranked #9 in the world during his college days. Today he is a world-class graphic designer who left the wet, salty part of surfing and went into creating stunning images of surfing. Those days as photographer for surfing exploits led Carson into a career that has been praised by so many luminaries and elite publications it would take many pages to describe the accolades.

Indeed, there are some facts relative to how he got started in his iconic career that are poignant and pertinent to this paper. After graduating from SDSU, Carson went into teaching. At the age of 24 (Plagens, 1996, p. 64) Carson was teaching at a private high school in Grants Pass, Oregon when he came across an ad in the paper for a two-week design courts for high school seniors. He went for it. After having his appetite for design stimulated by that course, he attended a commercial art school in Oregon (thanks to some financial help from his grandmother) and stayed "all of six months" (Plagens, p. 64).

Following that experience, Carson caught on as an intern at a surfer magazine and shortly thereafter scored a design and photography gig with Transworld Skateboarding. Carson told Newsweek that his lack of a formal design education didn't hurt him because "…There's a conformity that comes out of some of the schools" (Plagens, p. 64). Anyone who has viewed Carson's work immediately understands that he is not about conformity, quite the contrary.

According to his very creative biography, Graphis magazine called Carson is a "Master of Typography" for his work with fonts design; Emigre magazine devoted an entire issue to Carson, the first and only American designer to have that honor. Carson's graphic designs -- and his success story -- have appeared in at least 180 magazines, and he has been called the "Art Director of the Era" by Creative Review magazine.

Lately Carson has been involved in video, film and commercials. One only needs to know his client list (Toyota, Mercedes Benz, Microsoft, Quicksilver, Pepsi, Xerox, at&T, Atlantic Records, Citibank, CNN, Cuervo Gold, Giorgio Armani, Kodak, Levi's, Lucent Technologies, MGM Studies, NBC, MTV, Nike, Packard Bell, Nissan, Sony, Suzuki, Warner Brothers, to name a few) and the celebrities he has done creative work for (Meg Ryan, David Byrne, Nine Inch Nails, among others) to know that he is a renowned talent who is in demand.

The impressive resume of Carson includes his work designing the worldwide branding campaign for Microsoft, and the worldwide advertising campaign for Giorgio Armani. Everything Carson creates -- including the innovative biographical layout in his Web site -- is unique and speaks to the man's energy and creative innovation.

David Carson's Work -- Critics' Views

Newsweek ran a lengthy piece on Carson, which began with an attempt at describing his uniquely and sometimes confusingly diverse type styles: "NOW READ THIS -- or TRY to, ANYway: words in oddly mixed capitals and lowercase with some letters blurred, overlaid on photographs or crammed into little tilting boxes" (Plagens, et al., 1996, p. 64). The authors go to great lengths to point out Carson's originality in design, and in doing so they assert that the way he pieces letters together to create design will not likely be understood (or appreciated) by those over 50 years of age. "If you really like it, you're most likely under 30 and recently weaned from your skateboard," Plagens writes. And if you are willing to plunk down ten dollars to hear Carson lecture, you might be "a starry-eyed student at New York's Cooper Union," Plagens continues.

Carson eschews stereotypical design spacing and use of font; according to Plagens in Newsweek, the artist "…shattered the nice, clean, readable grid" and moreover Carson "scattered headlines and text across overlapping photos" (Plagens, p. 65). Plagens cleverly describes Carson's work as having "…raised illegibility to an art form."

Not everyone in the design and publishing business loves Carson's work; Ray Gun publisher Marvin Scott Jarrett fired Carson in 1996, because, as Rudy VanderLans said, "[Carson is] a ferocious promoter and he has a gigantic ego" (Plagens). The chair of the graphic design unit at Cranbook ("the Harvard Law of the field") is Andrew Blauvelt, who said: "I don't find his ads interesting at all. The ads are kind of crude. They just have the hip factor" (Plagens).

No artist or designer in history is able to -- or even wants to -- avoid criticism. Often it helps the artist to have someone in the field attack him -- that hot air tends to help balance all the accolades and keep perspective. In the book the End of Print: The Grafik Design of David Carson, written by Lewis Blackwell and Carson (2000), David Byrne writes the Introduction. In his long narrative, Byrne takes on some of the criticism of Carson's art.

For example, Carson's work has been called "degenerate" -- that the artist is in fact creating a degenerate culture with his bizarre designs. The only way to make the term "degenerate" stick, writes Byrne, is to blame Carson for the "current plurality in graphic design." And yet, Byrne continues, that plurality "of values is everywhere" and graphic designers (like Carson) are reflecting that "culture of doubt, seeking, and choice" (Byrne). Rather than causing a degenerate tone for today's culture, Byrne suggests charging Carson with "causing a regenerate culture of enthusiasm for graphic invention."

Yes, Byrne agrees that Carson's art resorts to "provocative statements, things that really excite in purely graphic terms, but often do not have a whole lot more to say." But what Carson is saying is merely, "look at this, look at it now, look at it and explore," Byrne emphasizes. And what's wrong with that, Byrne wonders, adding that the duty of a graphic designer "…is to provide a visual experience that communicates the given content effectively." And so what, says Byrne, if Carson's sometimes arcane designs (using confusing, overlapping, twisted and gnarled images) leave people wondering what the meaning could be? Carson's "core approach," Byrne writes, is "always to be leaving things slightly unresolved, slightly unsaid."

In his Introduction, Byrne takes on the critics who claim Carson's work represents "style-over-concept." "Style is in itself a concept," Byrne replies to those naysayers. Style is a shorthand, a way to refer to addition ideas. "It comes down to this," Byrne asserts: "Style that works is a concept, and a concept that doesn't work has not been styled effectively." The success of Carson's work has become "…the seed of its own growth into something very different," Byrne goes on. Carson's commitment has always been to be original in expression, to explore ceaselessly, and to have "…an unending quest to originate and assimilate," Byrne explains. Above all, Byrne insists -- and this is relative to any creative person in any genre -- an artist must "…change what you [are] doing if you recognize it [is] looking rule-bound."

In addition to the critical raves he has received for his seminal work, he has also been called a rebel, to wit "…enfante terrible of the print world," according to an Adweek article (1994). Noting that Carson had little or no formal design training, the "ex-surfer" -- who in 1994 launched his career doing TV commercials -- is quoted in the article admitting, "I haven't come anywhere close to expressing what I do in print. I always try to evolve." The challenge, he insist, is "…to interpret advertising for the audience trying to read it" (Adweek, p. 32).

In the Adweek article several of his "self-portrait" comments are published, showing, among other things, that Carson does not lack for a sense of humor. For example, his "Worst career move" was to "…marry the girlfriend of the guy who hired me, three months after the Vans job ended…" (at Ray Gun). And his "Best career move" was "Divorcing her 10 months later" (Adweek, p. 32). Not so funny, but impressive, was his "Finest Hour": "Winning the Best Designer Working With Photography Award from the International Center for Photography, New York." The "Reason" he's in advertising? "For the total creative freedom."