Book Club : Zapf Dingbats has a use.

David Carson is a man I have covered recently on this blog & how I seemingly used to hate his work, or so is my assumption as I don't recall seeing any of it. In college I was stupid, I could not see for looking. David Carson is now one of my all time favourite designers, up there with Jamie Reid, Chip Kidd & Peter Saville. I have more but the rule of three in literature is stopping me from writing anymore.

Out of control is not a monograph, which I thought it was before I bought it. It is a book that puts into perspective, what Carson meant at the time,  as well as showing the genius' vision for what a magazine with unreadable, in the main, could be. It destroyed, all in it's wake. I love his work for Raygun, hence the reason, I chose this book and not his more famous book "the End of Print" because that only has a chapter on Raygun.

"How can you like something you can't read, idiot?" because design can look beautiful and be madder than a ship's cat even though it fails on the direct level of communication; Don't mistake legibility for communication. Just because you can't read something it doesn't mean it doesn't communicate something. I will leave you with that thought.

PS he is really good with design lecture's so give him a search on Youtube. Informative and funny.

Film Review - helvetica: the movie

A movie about a font, would bore most common folk but for a designer it is something fabulous. The cream of the crop in the design world all appear to pay tribute to it's beauty or to hate on it. It is EVERYWHERE so it is hard to ignore it's impact.

Is it beautiful because it is neutral? Is it beautiful because it is multi purpose? Is it perfect? These are some of the questions raised in the film by (preapre yourself) Paula Scher, Stefan Sagmiester, David Carson, Designers Republic, Neville Brody & Erik Spiekermann. It has the son of one of it's makers looking over all of the tests before it became a finished font. The full movie is on youtube, which is where I watched it & I reccomend that you do.

4.5/5

Interstellar Grunge Design

the library has been a great source of inspiration for me over this term it has taught me a lot about typography but as well as the different styles of design. Never before have I been exposed to so much design before.

I have really got into grunge design from the work of david carson as well as the British firm, tomato. the company did a lot of work for the band underworld on their album "dubnobasswithmyheadman". It's very dark, very rough and has hints of punk about. the feeling that photocopiers have been destroyed with the amount of strain they have been used.  The work is visually chaotic and perfectly matches the beats of underworld music.

I wanted to capture the visual chaos of their work and match it with the imbalanced world of our solar system. Using stars and galaxies and black holes as a they are so beautiful but very complex. If printed the work would be on metallic paper so that it reflects very much like a solar panel. 

Carson, Not Even Once

At this stage in my graphic design career had never heard of David Carson, the master of grunge typography and the publisher of raygun magazine. I simply knew how to manipulate things in photoshop and thought what I can do with images I can sutrely do with type. So I did and these are the results. 

As I have developed an interest in type, I can see that they have carson written all of over them. He knew nothing about type when he made his pieces and at this stage (late college) neither did I so I once had something in common with a typographic genius. He broke the rule and and I may very well of done but how could I know I was breaking them without knowing of there existence.  This means that I can become one too. Maybe. Probably not. but maybe.