Carson Final

Christina Visconti 11/17/09
Computer Graphics Professor Klinkowstein

David Carson is a graphic designer, born on September 8th, 1955, in Corpus Christi, Texas, but grew up in New York City. Carson traveled all over the world in his youth because of his father’s career. Carson was not originally planning on being an artist. He first worked as a sociology teacher and was a professional surfer as well. His involvement in surfing led him to his earlier jobs, directing skateboarding and surfing magazines and the 1980s. Carson began his career with graphic design in 1980 when he took a two week graphic design course at the University of Arizona. He continued to study design at San Diego University and Oregon College of Commercial Art. In 1983, Carson traveled to Switzerland to study Sociology, and met his first great influence in design, Hans-Rudolph Lutz.
Most of David Carson’s most well known work has a lot to do with typography. Carson uses a wide variety of typefaces and sizes in many of his works. Over the years he has gained a great reputation for this and is now known as one of the greatest designers of the 90s. His involvement in RayGun, an internationally known magazine with a focus on music and its accompanying lifestyles, helped him to gain attention in the design world, as he designed the first 30 issues. He quickly accrued a long list of clients who wanted his work, including high profile companies such as Nike, Pepsi Cola, and Mercedes-Benz.
David Carson has also published four books on design. The End of Print, published in 1995, was co-created by Carson and Lewis Blackwell and is now the best-selling graphic design book worldwide. His three other books, 2nd Sight (1997), Fotografiks (1999), and Trek (2000), have further established him in the field of design. In fact, Carson has won over 170 awards for his work to date. Carson still works in New York, but runs his own company, David Carson Design, Inc., which also has offices in Del Mar, California, and Zurich, Switzerland.
Carson’s work set a precedent for all typography work in graphic design to come after. His lack of fear to play with words in his art helped him to develop his own style and set him apart from many other designers at the time. He made it acceptable to use letters and words instead of imagery to get the point across. Because of this, his work is highly sought after and has inspired many other artists, as well. His work is based off of instinct most of the time, experimentation with overlapping of images and different layouts of text.
Simplicity is huge part of Carson’s work. Less is more seems to be the mantra when he creates his images. His work does not need to be complex in order to catch and keep attention, because he arranges the elements of it in an interesting way, breaking the norms. He is mostly known for his work with typography, though it is not the only type of work that he produces. Carson also creates logos and works with flash animation and even photography as well.
The poster that Carson created for the documentary Helvetica by Gary Hustwit is an example of how he uses the less is more theory, with only the title and creator as the text, but arranges in a visually jarring way, layered over a faded image of food that is not very clear to the viewer. The black and white text is simple and does not take away from the strange but interesting composition of the text and allows the viewer to focus on piecing together the letters to form the words in their own minds.
David Carson’s poster for the Obama campaigns is both easier and harder to read than the poster for Helvetica. The words are all together and arranged in a way that would be simple to read, were it not blocked out by a hulking black figured painted over it, with a question mark beside it. The words in the background speak of hope and change, but the writing over it asks “Can he do it?” as if Carson does not actually believe that Obama can bring hope and change definitely.
Carson’s advertisement for Raybans is not very obvious. The viewer reads the word “orbs” and may not know immediately what it means. Then it comes into focus that the O is actually part of a pair of sunglasses. But we could interpret this in two different ways, the orb is the circular shape of the sunglasses, or the sunglasses are protecting you form the orb that is the Sun. The bright yellow coloring of the background lends to this interpretation as it disappears underneath the lens of the sunlgasses.

Class Notes 3

Illustrator - vector based (infinite possibilities) mathematical equation. can be scaled (enlarged or made smaller) without losing quality
Photoshop - raster based (grid) (becomes pixelized when enlarged)

Start big, Print small.

Highlights, ALWAYS HAVE DETAIL IN HIGHLIGHTS.
Shadows, also need detail. No blacking out of shadows.
Midtones, good gradation of tones.

Human eye can see more than more digital cameras
1000:1 contrast ratio
Cameras 100:1 contrast ratio (magazines/print)
Newspaper 20-30:1 contrast ratio

Design Principles
facilitation - to not control, but make ease for others to take control
control - to have complete control

inflection point - like a turning point

facilitation - no original content, facilitation for others content, (Win7 site) Biggest media company in the world, Google.

control - last year at marienbad

Singularity
- Computational terms change
- Every 18 months, capacity of computational functions doubles.

Latte Cups

I don't even drink coffee, but I want this cup. Entered in the Melitta Lattea competition, this cup is probably one of the prettiest coffee cups that I've ever seen. I'm a huge fan of simplicity and this cup takes the cake on that.



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Urban Benches

Alexandre Moronnoz's series, Urban Seating, looks cool. But is it comfortable? Strangely enough, it seems like it might be. Plus, they're environmentally friendly, which seems like it's a big selling point on pretty much anything these days.



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Wall growth.

Want plants but have nowhere to put them? Like to look at yourself? Then the Grass Mirror is for you! h2o architectes have designed this piece as a way to contemplate the world and it's take on nature. A reflected view, chopped up by bits of nature, though I'm not quite sure of what it's trying to get across, whether it be an introspective look at oneself, or a look at the world as we know it (not very green.)



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iPhone Tour Guide

Of course there's an app for that. This particular app seems a bit more interesting than useful to me. A database of interesting architecture, based upon your iPhone's current location. It takes the GPS of where you are and points out architecture it thinks it interesting, and even gives you some background information on it. It's free to try, so why not?



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Canned Sound

This is not what you think of when you think of speakers. I can't imagine what they actually sound like, but it brings me back to the days of childhood, playing telephone through two cans connected by a piece of string. Those things never ever worked.



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