“It’s not about knowing all the gimmicks and photo tricks. If you haven’t got the eye, no program will give it to you” -David Carson

When most think of rule-breakers, a negative connotation follows along with it. Modern artists were about to learn what it feels like to squirm at the brink of the Postmodern revolution. One major contributor to the onset of mass hysteria among artists preceding the postmodern transformation is David Carson. There are many characteristics that were particularly offsetting for those who had spent so many years developing a system. Carson is unorthodox and completely revolutionary in his designs and style.  

             Carson found a whole new way to communicate without sentences and structure but rather with his creativity of graphic design. The letters and images created shapes and interactions that told a story beyond what words could express. His work was so impressive to his colleagues that he was not even required to have his work reviewed or edited by his superiors before it went to print. This complete artistic freedom was worth the shoddy wages he was receiving and he took full advantage of this rare chance to experiment. He has often asked how to define “good work”. In his mind if you were to have no limitations whatsoever on a particular piece, monetarily or otherwise, would you still have come up with this layout? If the answer is no, you should probably reevaluate what you’ve done.

Exposure from Ray Gun magazine caused his career to take off. Leading Corporations such as Pepsi Cola, Nike, and Microsoft wanted their ads and commercials to have that signature Carson touch. He was suddenly known by all audiences as a new-aged communicator and creative mastermind. Some of the ads were hardly legible in ways but they conveyed the message that the client wanted in a more profound way than ever before. Carson claimed that legibility and communication were not one in the same, and even some of the most legible work could be conveying the wrong message. Conversely, his work showed the emotions and truly humanistic reactions that he felt when exposed to the article, news story, or work of art in question. In a similar way, it evoked feelings from the audience that matched his interpretation and connected the artist and witness in a way that no simple literature could have accomplished.

                                

With an eye for mixing the spacing and sizes of texts and photos in an unfamiliar way, none of Carson’s work could be matched by other aspiring graphic designers. David Carson made sure that everyone knew it too. He demanded that his name be incorporated into every piece he created, and sometimes it was the most eye-catching portion of the entire ad! He did spread the wealth a little though and began doing low-cost student workshops to help others to grasp this unique style of graphic design. However, all along he believed that his approach could not be taught, but instead was a personal investigation of one’s own response to a given situation.

Between 2000 and 2004, Carson opened his very own art studio in South Carolina and also became the creative director at Gibbes Museum in the same town. He continues to work at this museum and develop his growing body of work within his studio. On top of that, he still creates magnificent designs for magazines, produces state of the art advertisements, and directs commercials for those companies lucky enough to work with him. Carson even did some work during the 2008 presidential election to convey his thoughts and feelings about the candidates to his readers.

                                                         

Overall, David Carson’s work has not only inspired artists all over the world, but has also created an entirely new way of communicating a message to an audience. By using a variety of mediums in an unconventional yet ingenious fashion, Carson broke all the rules of traditional modernism. David Carson showed the world how expressive typography and graphic design can become when derived from true emotion, and his mark on the world of art could never be forgotten.

~ by itsartyo on November 6, 2009.