When I started many years ago I disciplined myself to see the beauty in letter shapes, the kerning between letters to form elegant words, the arrangement of words to form beautiful phrases and paragraphs and the combination of text, graphics and images to form inspiring pages. Then I discovered David Carson and found the freedom to play with letters, words and paragraphs to form eye-catching and exuberant pages that broke the rules in intelligent ways.
Really? No comments and barely any views on this? This is such a great interview. As far as Carson goes...love him or hate him...there's a LOT one can learn from what he has to say.
What I like the most about David is his lack of rules. I've been a designer for 25 years myself and the best work I see are the stuff that's "off grid" so to speak. The first years of my career I felt a bit guilty I never used grids or typographic systems, but now I just don't care. I've never ever used them actually. I like happy accidents and find random stuff interesting. When it becomes too academic or scientific I loose interest.
I got the same experiences. For a long time I almost always using grids and strict guideline for my works. These works are systematic and clean but after all, the works that I did with my intuition remain stuffs that I really like.
I think it's interesting that he doesn't have an answer of who's smashing it right now. Not to suggest I'm the next David Carson, but I always find it hard to answer that, because the whole world is a source of inspiration, not just following what's coming out right now.
Will be epic to see what he will make for an art cover of a song (dubstep) like Skrillex. Because he tell he listen the music before and its inspire him to make the final result.
