Many commentators contend that you can trace the advent of a deconstructive style of typography back to David Carson. The innovative and blisteringly of-the-moment, distressed graphics he produced, has earned him the dubious epithet: ‘godfather of grunge’.
The example chosen here not a typical of the work he is best known for. The stark monochrome is a departure from his usual / unusual use of photography. Even the apparently random letter spacing is positively staid when compared with most of his signature-pieces. In this instance the message is the primary focus.
‘Don’t mistake legibility for communication’ has almost become Carson’s catchphrase. The message that he is always eager to reiterate is that the emotion that good communication design imparts is decisive in the assimilation of the message.
Carson often shows two contrasting images to illustrate this point. These images feature two identically painted, garage doors. The doors are situated adjacent to one another. On the first door, the owner has affixed a series uniform letterforms which read N O (P) A R K I N G. On the second door the exasperated owner has daubed an identical message in the kind of angry brush strokes normally associated with the lexicon of dangerous lunatics. The audience is then invited to choose the garage door they would choose to park in front of.
In commercial design, communication is synonymous with a sterile language based on extensive audience research often catering for the lowest common denominator. However, a message delivered in an orthodox (or boring) way, will often have less impact than a similar message delivered in an unconventional format. The unexpected nature of the design and time spent deciphering the layout, has a more lasting impact.
Carson used imperfect technologies such as fax machines and photocopiers to degrade images and text. This low-fi aesthetic and inclusion of elements that hint at error and discord, is intended to distance the design from anything that may have been too carefully considered. No committee has been responsible for signing this off. The design has an immediacy and honesty that shrugs off any suggestion of being ‘designed’ at all.
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 [1]
In early examples of Carson’s work on Ray Gun magazine, it was often difficult to tell the difference between planned design elements and random production mistakes. Photographs were cropped incorrectly obscuring large blocks of text. Typos commonplace. Titles, headings and pull-quotes are occasionally omitted, often rendering the article virtually unreadable. [2] Carson later claimed that these were genuine mistakes. However, by then the monster had been born and a chaotic non-house style established. In one example, an interview with Bryan Ferry Carson deemed so dull that he ran the entire text in Zapf Dingbat glyphs.
Ray Gun was far from being an isolated phenomenon. Neville Brody’s deconstructive style at The Face magazine had been established since the eighties. MTV was at its zenith. Ray Gun dramatised the relationship between print and this burgeoning video portal, transposing the vibrant analogue aesthetic to the static medium of print. The result was a chaotic, abstract style, not always readable, but distinctive in appearance. Carson’s work, and ‘deconstructive’ graphics in general, are trading on the multi-channel, high-bandwidth, mass-media spectacle of print’s endangered status. Refashioning information as an aesthetic event. [3]
References:
[1] Computerarts. Interview with David Carson Available at: www.computerarts.co.uk/in_depth/interviews/david_carson (accessed 12th February 2011) - no dates or author information available
[2] [3] Kirschenbaum. M (1999) The Other End of Print: David Carson, Graphic Design, and the Aesthetics of Media [online]Available at: http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/papers/kirsch.html (accessed 16th November 2010)
http://www.davidcarsondesign.com/
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