Influential Designer: David Carson

David Carson is an influential American graphic designer and is principal and chief designer of David Carson Design Inc.

Carson was born on September 8, 1952 in Corpus Christi, Texas. Carson and his family moved to New York City four years later. Since then he has traveled all around the world but has maintained New York as his base of operations. Carson now owns two studios; one in Del Mar, California and another in Zürich, Switzerland.

Carson has been considered "the father of grunge" after he developed his signature style, using "dirty" type and non-mainstream photographic techniques, during the late 80's.

He went on to become the art director for Transworld Skateboarding magazine but became more well known when he was hired to designing Ray Gun magazine, which had music and lifestyle as its subject. In this period, publications such as the New York Times (1994) and Newsweek (1996) featured Carson and increased his publicity greatly.

What interests me in his work is that he appeals to me, as I am a skater/beachy person and also my design style is similar to his; grungy, dirty, chaotic, random.
Though not all of his designs were chaotic, some of them were simple but kept the semi-messed up style that he has.