The Work Of David Carson

The perfect counterpoint to Josef Muller-Brockmans hyper rigidity and strict type and layout philosophy of the Swiss Style, is renegade graphic designer David Carson.

To many he is the father of "grunge" and distressed type and images, that seem to echo the music of both Seattle, and the burgeoning Industrial Music scene led by Nine Inch Nails. (Where are Gravity Kills and Filter right now?) But his work is far more important and substantial than that

An important (some might say the most important) graphic designer of the 1990s, he through out the International Style's playbook, and brought to us type as texture, image, and decoration. As art director of surf culture magazine Ray Gun He mixed type faces, sizes, weights, in almost a ransom note style fashion. He created typographic blasphemy by stretching and distorting typefaces. Type sat at uncomfortable angles, running into other text on the page.

He wasn't afraid to to break out of, abuse, or just completely jettison Muller-Brockman's grid in favor of intriguing, emotional, though often illegible layouts at Ray Gun magazine. No one could ever accuse Carson's work of being cold or sterile.

Carson's work was perhaps activist against graphic design itself, but certainly not in the political sense. He followed that grungey distorted type gravy train all the way to NBC, CNN, Coca Cola, Sony, Nike, and Microsoft.

One of his more famed collaborations was with Trent Reznor, when he did the art work for "The Fragile"

Unfortunately, Carson's style became so mimicked and copied, it turned into cliché. Just watch the opening credits of David Fincher's Se7en done by famed opening credits/title house Imaginary Forces.

Carson was especially influential to me, and my study of Concrete Poetry in the late 90s, which I received a summer research grant for. I admired his use of type as image, texture and grit, and tried to incorporate it into my own work.

"Concrete poetry or shape poetry is poetry in which the typographical arrangement of words is as important in conveying the intended effect as the conventional elements of the poem, such as meaning of words, rhythm, rhyme and so on.
It is sometimes referred to as visual poetry, a term that has evolved to have distinct meaning of its own, but which shares the distinction of being poetry in which the visual elements are as important as the text."