David Carson Chaos theory
David Carson read the handbook of ‘good’ graphic design. Then he tore it up, rewrote the rules and found a way to leave his mark.
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David Carson is an internationally acclaimed graphic designer who hit hard in the early nineties with Beach Culture and Ray Gun magazines. His work was intuitive, daring, loose. He revolutionised the font game and turned traditional typographical design theory on its head. And by fusing sophisticated, conceptual ideas with child-like simplicity, he became an art star in a medium that’s generally considered background. His first book, with Lewis Blackwell, The End of Print, is the top-selling graphic design book of all time. Newsweek wrote that he “changed the public face of graphic design.” London-based Creative Review called him “the most famous graphic designer on the planet”. And David Byrne, Nine Inch Nails and Bush contracted his unique eye to design their wares, as did Pepsi, Toyota and Microsoft.
But his visual work is only part of it. He lectures internationally, and has garnered a cult following. He is a lifelong surfer and doting father. I met him in 2001 when we worked together on Big Surf, an NY-spawned single-issue magazine. His downtown studio was a mess. Never in my life had I seen so many icons on a single computer screen. He seemed to be juggling fifty jobs. I was concerned about our deadline, the precious art sent in by contributors that lay scattered haphazardly about his floor, whether he even cared. We were a couple of month’s late with the issue, but of course it won design awards, and is still talked about today.
Which is to say that there is a lot of chance and chaos theory in Carson’s work, but somehow the chips or the cards or the drops of coffee fall in perfect disorder.
Some years back he moved his business into a small studio on Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu. A few yards down the road was a peculiar sign: it read ‘DRUNK DRIVER’ in black, block text, with ‘CALL 911’ just below. Carson marvelled at it. When it came time to put up a sign of his own he copied the exact font, colour, shape and scale: ‘GRAPHIC DESIGNER CALL 457-5652’.
HUCK: You were a teacher before you were a graphic designer. How did you make the shift?
David Carson: I was teaching my first year at a strange little cult religious school in Oregon. I had grades one through twelve all day, in one room. When they had a question to ask they either raised an American flag or a Christian flag, depending on what kind of question it was. Strange experience! Anyway, I got a postcard announcing a two-week graphic design workshop during the summer, and it described what they would be studying. It was for high school seniors. I read the description and thought, ‘Wow, that’s a profession? You can be creative, have fun, make stuff and get paid?’ So I called and asked the school, University of Arizona in Tucson, if I could come, and they said, ‘Sure.’
I returned to Southern California when I was done teaching, where I had secured a job with Nancy Katin [Katin surf trunks]. I worked for a few weeks, not positive if I was really going to the graphic design workshop or not. Finally I told my boss, Nancy Katin, that I needed two weeks off in the middle of the summer to attend this workshop. She told me if I left for the workshop, I would not have a job when I returned. That made the decision a bit more difficult, but somehow I felt I had to try this graphic design thing. And I did. Luckily, I had a very cool, funny and good guy instructor, Jackson Boelts. It’s hard to say if I would have been as interested had I had a loser teacher. But at the end of those two weeks it was so clear to me: That’s what I wanted to do.
What do you consider to be your career highlights?
In terms of work I would really say Beach Culture magazine, for a number of different reasons. It was the first time all my earlier training had a chance to come together. I had done Transworld Skateboarding, I had moved to the East Coast to do Musician and Billboard, and then after I got fired for the design being too radical. I’d heard that Surfer Publications were talking about doing this more experimental magazine, and I flew out to California to interview for the job. Beach Culture was never intended to be a surf magazine. It was loosely hung on this idea that people at the beach also enjoy other things — it was an attitude. It was myself and the editor, Neil Feineman, in the back of the Surfer offices, literally in the warehouse, just doing our thing. I look back now and it was so pure. I was living with it around the clock. We did every issue like it was our last. I was so broke I was scrounging for gas or lunch money half the time, but it didn’t matter. We were experimenting. My thing had yet to take off at that time, but the issues still hold up well. They shut it down about a year before the whole street culture thing kicked in, which was a shame.
There’s a story I heard you tell at one of your talks about kids being innately creative...
I think every kid is an artist and it gradually gets beaten out of them as they grow up. ‘No, Billy, cows aren’t purple,’ that kind of stuff. And I always remember this study where a teacher went into a first grade class and asked, ‘How many of you are artists?’ And of course the whole class raises their hands. Then he goes to second grade and asks the same question and gets the same results, the stuff is hanging on the fridge, the parents love it, all kids raising their hands. But by the time he gets up to sixth or seventh grade and asks the same question, only a couple of kids raise their hands. It’s been beaten out of the rest of them.
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David Carson (text) by Jamie Brisick is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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