David Carson

Carson's work is characterised by chaotic and messy typography and overlapping organisation of images, which is experimental and has broken the traditional grid of graphic. I think his approach of delivering personal feelings through designing is the biggest difference with previous designers. Without any trainings on grids or schools of thought, his work is not as “academic” as the work of Tschichold and Josef, which I believe has made his communicating method more sensitive and intuitive.

"When David Carson had to design a layout for a magazine, he first read the article and then tried to visually reproduce the message and recreate the concept."

https://www.designboom.com/design/interview-with-graphic-designer-david-carson-09-22-2013/

Ray Gun magazine January 1995

With this cover Carson didn't use any cover lines as people usually did. "I looked at this portrait and realized you really didn’t need to say anything else, the landscape of his face said it all." The content was about keith richards coming clean about sex, drugs, rock and roll etc, from his face we can already feel a strong emotion or determination, cover lines are needless and could even make the emotion interpretation not that strong.

For the contents about different rock stars talking about teachers they had lusted after in school in this beach culture article ‘hot for teacher’. In this cover, a teacher is sitting on some books, and the type lustfully leans toward her in order to reflect what the rock stars talking about. I think Carson actually rethink and reproduce the information based on his understand, which is subjective and is totally different from what Jan Tschichold states about objectivity in Modern Typography.

Ray Gun Magazine

This is an opener for a long article and interview with singer songwriter morrissey. Reading through the article, Carson found the quote ‘I have no interest whatsoever in any aspect of whordom’ was interesting and had potential to be transferred into visual language. "I chose to use this large in the opener and cropped him a bit – as he was a bit mysterious in this interview – and in general at that time." His design is based on what he feels and what he observes so far. Organisation of typography is disorder and in different typography styles. The combination of images of Morrissey and the text work as a whole to interpret the content.

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‘mixed messages’ from beach culture magazine

NIKE air challenge advertisement

"My work uses very few software tricks, or even color. it’s about font choice, cropping and basic, often intuitive design decisions, ones that are appropriate for the client, audience, and myself."

What is similar with Josef Müller-Brockmann is he also trying to make messages understood by the audience from different culture, breaking language barrier.

A painful craft of precision and consistency are no longer the only option due to appearance of new software and technology. Designers were liberated to reject the rule-based traditional typography and translate their messages into visual languages whatever they wanted.

Rather than an objective “message-deliverer” as Jan Tschichold stated, Carson’s work is carrying his personal emotions based on his personal life experiences and his opinions and feels about the contents of the messages are supposed to be delivered.

" I’m most fascinated about how social media can work with good design to produce desired and effective results. I still think it’s largely an untapped area. I’m always following world events, news, scanning everything really. life in all its details continues to fascinate me endlessly. I’m watching the various eco movements, politics, new products, and constantly wondering how design can play a bigger, more effective and more important role in all of this."

On the contrast, new technology has led to “unity” of design works, which is a significant part in Tschichold’s New Typography. He rejected the idea that all typography should in one form or grid, and believe the uniqueness is the point that make work strong. Because of this, he didn’t use too much technology approaching his work, which made his work distinct in that period. In the work above, crooked texts and cut typography both suggest a childlike handmade sense, which could be one of the reasons of being distinct and attractive.

"I believe strongly the more one can bring personal uniqueness into the work, the better the work becomes. Anyone can buy the same software and do reasonable work. I think overall designers today have gotten lazy, and let the programs and computers make too many decisions for them."

https://www.huckmag.com/art-and-culture/art-2/david-carson/

Ray Gun Magazine

Although Carson has broken so many rules even without knowing them, he still expect basic rules of typography toward legibility, employing forms that comply with the natural inclination of the human eye to seek harmony and ease. In this cover, the image is all blurred but the head of the person, which could be seen as a centre in the whole composition and gains the most focus. The weight of strokes are various to clarify the order to be received by the audience, which come back some traditional rules that previous designers has stated.

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