David Carson (graphic designer)

Carson was born on September 8, 1955 in Corpus Christi, Texas.

He attended Cocoa Beach High School, was class president for three years, and still considers Cocoa Beach, Florida to be the place he is "most from".

He attended San Diego State University, graduating with "Honors and Distinction" a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology.

Carson's first contact with graphic design was in 1980 at the University of Arizona during a two-week graphics course, taught by Jackson Boelts.

From 1982 to 1987, Carson worked as a teacher in Torrey Pines High School in San Diego, California. During that time, he was also a professional surfer and reached a 9th in the WSA pro-4A division [4] Carson had his own signature model surfboard with Infinity surfboards and his own signature model fin with rainbow fin co. he still surfs regularly at his property in the Caribbean.

In 1983, Carson started to experiment with graphic design and found himself immersed in the artistic and bohemian culture of Southern California. He attended the Oregon College of Commercial Art, only for a couple of months before accepting an unpaid internship with Action Now magazine, formerly Skateboarder magazine. That year, he went to Switzerland to attend a three-week workshop in graphic design. The teacher of the workshop, Hans-Rudolf Lutz, became his first great influence.

Carson became the art director of Transworld Skateboarding magazine in 1984, and remained there until 1988, helping to give the magazine a distinctive look. By the end of his tenure there he had started to develop his signature style, using "dirty" type and non-mainstream photographic techniques. He was also the art director of a spinoff magazine, Transworld Snowboarding, which began publishing in 1987.

In 1989, on the recommendation of Paul Holmes, then editor of Surfer magazine and originator of the Beach Culture magazine concept,[5] Steve Pezman, publisher of Surfer (and later Surfers Journal) tapped Carson to design Beach Culture, a quarterly publication that evolved out of a to-the-trade annual supplement. Though only six quarterly issues were produced, the tabloid-sized publication—edited by author Neil Feineman[6] —allowed Carson to make his first significant impact on the world of graphic design and typography—with ideas that were called innovative even by those who were not fond of his work, in which legibility often relied on readers' strict attention. For one feature on a blind surfer, Carson opened with a two-page spread covered in black.[7] After Beach Culture, Carson art directed and designed Surfer magazine for the next two years, before joining Feineman and others as art director of Ray Gun Magazine in 1992. Carson then relocated his studio to New York City for seven years. He currently splits his time between the West Indies, California and Europe.

Carson was hired by publisher Marvin Scott Jarrett to design Ray Gun, an alternative music and lifestyle magazine that debuted in 1992. He designed and art directed the magazine for over 3 years, sending a completed issue to be printed when he finished designing it, with no one approving his designs before printing.

In one issue, he notoriously used Zapf Dingbats, a font containing only symbols (i.e. no letters), as the font for what he considered a rather dull interview with Bryan Ferry.[8]

Ray Gun helped make Carson well known and attracted new admirers to his work. In this period, he was featured in publications such as The New York Times (May 1994) and Newsweek (1996).

In 1995, Carson left Ray Gun to found his own studio, David Carson Design, in New York City. He started to attract major clients from all over the United States. During the next three years (1995–1998), Carson was doing work for Pepsi Cola, Ray Ban (orbs project), Nike, Microsoft, Budweiser, Giorgio Armani, NBC, American Airlines and Levi Strauss Jeans, and later worked for a variety of new clients, including AT&T Corporation, British Airways, Kodak, Lycra, Packard Bell, Sony, Suzuki, Toyota, Warner Bros., CNN, Cuervo Gold, Johnson AIDS Foundation, MTV Global, Prince, Lotus Software, Fox TV, Nissan, Quiksilver, Intel, Mercedes-Benz, MGM Studios and Nine Inch Nails.

He named and designed the adventure lifestyle magazine Blue, in 1997. David designed the first issue and the first three covers. Carson's cover design for the first issue was selected as one of the "top 40 magazine covers of all time" by the American Society of Magazine Editors.[9]

In 2000, Carson closed his New York City studio and followed his children to Charleston, South Carolina, where their mother had relocated them. Since then he has lived in San Diego, Seattle, Zurich, and Tortola. Currently he lives and works in Europe, California and Tortola. He also continues to lecture worldwide on creativity and design.

In 2004, Carson was the freelance Creative Director of the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston. That year, he also designed the special "Exploration" edition of Surfing Magazine and directed a variety of TV commercials, including Lucent Technologies, Budweiser, American Airlines, Xerox, UMPQUA Bank and numerous others.

In 2011 Carson worked as worldwide creative director for Bose Corporation. He also served as Design Director for the 2011 Quiksilver Pro Surfing contest in Biarritz, France, and designed the branding for the 2012 Quiksilver Pro in New York City. He designed a set of three posters for the San Sebastián International Film Festival in Spain and the covers for Huck, Little White Lies, and Monster Children magazines. In 2015, Carson was commissioned to design the posters and publicity for the Harvard Graduate School of Design, for the 2015–2016 school year.

Since 2010, Carson has lectured and held workshops and exhibitions across Europe, South America and the United States. He was invited to judge the European Design Awards in London (DD+A) in both 2010 and 2011, and was the keynote speaker of the Fuse branding conference in Chicago in 2014 and the international creativity festival in Dubai in 2015. Carson continues to lecture throughout the world.

Carson has been featured in over 300 interviews/articles worldwide both digital and print.

Carson claims that his work is "subjective, personal and very self indulgent". His layouts feature distortions or mixes of 'vernacular' typefaces and fractured imagery, rendering them almost illegible. Indeed, his maxim of the 'end of print' questioned the role of type in the emergent age of digital design, following on from California New Wave and coinciding with experiments at the Cranbrook Academy of Art.

Design writer Steven Heller has said, "He significantly influenced a generation to embrace typography as an expressive medium". Design educator and historian Ellen Lupton said after the release of Carson's book Trek, "David Carson continues to be one of the world's most distinctive typographic voices—much imitated, but never matched" (ID Mag.nyc).

• AIGA (the American Institute of Graphic Arts) called Carson "our biggest star".
• The magazine Eye produced a graphic chart showing Carson to be the most 'Googled' graphic designer ever.
• In a cover story in 2014, the international design magazine CASA called Carson "The Most Famous Graphic Designer in the World".
• In a feature story, Newsweek magazine said of Carson that he "changed the public face of graphic design".
• When Graphic Design USA Magazine (NYC) listed the "most influential graphic designers of the era" David was listed as one of the all time 5 most influential designers, with Milton Glaser, Paul Rand, Saul Bass and Massimo Vignelli.
• In 2018, Carson was inducted into the East Coast Surfing Hall of Fame (ECSHOF).

In November 1995, Carson published his first book, End of Print. It sold over 200,000 copies in five different languages and soon became the best-selling graphic design book worldwide. His second book, 2nd Sight, followed in 1997. In 1998, Carson worked with Professor John Kao of the Harvard Business School on a documentary entitled The Art and Discipline of Creativity. Carson's third book was Fotografiks (1999) which earned Carson the Award of Best Use of Photography in Graphic Design. Carson's fourth book, Trek, was released in 2003.

Carson is also featured in The History of Graphic Design by Philip Meggs and The Encyclopedia of Surfing by Matt Warshaw.

David Carson has won over 230 Awards for his work in graphic design, photography, advertising and branding. Some of these awards include:

• Best Overall Design, Society of Publication Designers in New York.
• Cover of the Year, Society of Publication Designers in New York.
• Award of Best Use of Photography in Graphic Design, International Center of Photography
• Designer of the Year (1998 and 1999), International Center of Photography
• Master of Typography, Graphis magazine (NY)
• The most famous graphic designer on the planet, April 2004 – London Creative Review magazine (London)
• One of the 30 most influential Macintosh users over the 30-year history of the computer – only two graphic designers were selected, Carson and April Greiman. Apple Inc. (January 2014)[10]
• AIGA medal – 2014[11]

• Carson, David (1995). The End of Print: The Graphic Design of David Carson. Chronicle Books. ISBN 0-8118-1199-9.
• Carson, David (1997). David Carson: 2nd Sight: Grafik Design After the End of Print. Universe Publishing. ISBN 0-7893-0128-8.
• Meggs, Phillip B.; David Carson (1999). Fotografiks: An Equilibrium Between Photography and Design Through Graphic Expression That Evolves from Content. Laurence King. ISBN 1-85669-171-3.
• Carson, David (2003). Trek: David Carson, Recent Werk. Gingko Press. ISBN 1-58423-046-0.

• Meggs, Phillip B.; David Carson (1999). Fotografiks: An Equilibrium Between Photography and Design Through Graphic Expression That Evolves from Content. Laurence King. ISBN 1-85669-171-3.
• Stecyk, Craig; David Carson (2002). Surf Culture: The Art History of Surfing. Laguna Art Museum in association with Gingko Press. ISBN 1-58423-113-0.
• McLuhan, Marshall; David Carson; Eric McLuhan; Terrance Gordon (2003). The Book of Probes. Gingko Press. ISBN 1-58423-056-8.
• Carson, David (2003). Trek: David Carson, Recent Werk. Gingko Press. ISBN 1-58423-046-0.
• Mayne, Thom; David Carson (2005). Ortlos: Architecture of the Networks. Hatje Cantz. ISBN 3-7757-1652-1.

• David Carson Design – official site
• David Carson Documentary – CURRENTLY IN PRODUCTION – official site
• David Carson at TED
  • TED Talks: David Carson on design, discovery and humor (TED2003)