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Carson's typography serves not just to present and intepret editorial content, but often takes the place of content--in the traditional verbal sense--altogether. His style, which has its roots in the typographic experiments initiated at Cranbrook and CalArts, provided a visual language for Generation X, a secret code whose messages are embedded not in words but in the peculiar forms and configurations the alphabet itself can take.
Beach Culture and Ray Gun visualized the desires and ambitions of specific subcultures. Precedents for such canons of street style include the British magazines The Face and ID. As art director of The Face--and other magazines--during the 1980s, Neville Brody developed a typographic approach that was, in turns, futuristic and atavistic. He generated strange new letterforms while letting old ones--such as Helvetica--flash briefly back into fashion. Brody, like David Carson a few years later, was able to transfer the subcultural cachet of his magazine work to the field of advertising, creating distinctive campaigns for Nike and other manufacturers who sought to appeal to the youth markets addressed by his magazines.
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Ray Gun (Independents Day)
Beach Culture |
