[ ⊙ o ⊙ ] David Carson Concept Board

How has __________ impacted the graphic design world?

David Carson, an American graphic designer, surfer, and art director, has impacted the graphic design world because he was known to be the one who broke all the “rules” of design through the use of grunge typography.  Grunge typography is essentially fonts that are not clean and simple, but rather chaotic and have messy lines.  This type of font is made well-known through the Ray Gun Effect (Ray Gun is the magazine that Carson first designed for).  With grunge typography, Carson arranged letters in a way that the words were almost illegible as a way to express emotions and concepts.  Despite having such a lasting influence on the design world today, Carson was initially a surfer who graduated from San Diego University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology.  His first contact with the graphic design world was in the University of Arizona in 1980, however, Hans Rudolf Lutz was the man who had the first great influence on his design work in 1983.

When he finally received his degree in graphic design, Carson began to work with the magazine Transworld Skateboarding in 1984 and Transworld Snowboarding in 1987.  The first significant impact Carson had in graphic design was when he was asked to create issue covers for Beach Culture, in which he used unique ways to communicate ideas to readers, such as covering two pages with black for a feature of a blind surfer.  Carson was then asked to create covers for Ray Gun, where he used type that was uncommonly seen, such as Dingbat.  Through these methods of using type and out-of-the-box approaches, Carson made his own name well-known.  From then on, Carson began to work with clients such as AT&T, Pepsi Cola, Ray Ban, NBC, Apple, Microsoft, etc.

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Carson_(graphic_designer)
http://www.davidcarsondesign.com/
http://www.aiga.org/medalist-david-carson/
http://www.designishistory.com/1980/david-carson/

http://layersmagazine.com/an-interview-with-david-carson.html

http://www.theawl.com/2012/08/grunge-typography
http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/27/5247944/the-awl-history-of-grunge-typography