CONVERSATION

The End Has No End: A conversation with revolutionary designer David Carson

by Jeff Mellin

With the introduction of desktop design software in the late 80s and early 90s, a century’s worth of ideas of expressionism and improvisation could at last find their way onto the printed age. Designers could have direct, fluid control, allowing design to be as much about their interpretation of the text as it was about presenting the content — often to the dismay of readers.

One of the most notorious culprits was David Carson, a former professional surfer and sociologist, whose radical approach to page layout in specialty magazines like Beach Culture and later Ray Gun would completely revolutionize and reinvigorate the art of print. His now ironically titled book, The End of Print, is the bestselling graphic design book of all time. His latest book, Trek, features his work for film, web, and recording artists such as Nine Inch Nails.

In 2005, I had the pleasure of interviewing him for Port Folio Weekly via email during his Paris lecture tour.

JM: There are plenty of designers famous to other designers, but few who’ve become pop-culture household names. Those that have are known for their architecture, furniture, interiors, fashion, or pop art — but not print art direction. You’ve got rock star recognition for your bread-and-butter trade work. That’s pretty unlikely — almost unprecedented. How do you explain it?

DC: The definition of good luck, I guess: When preparation meets opportunity. I had the venues that fit the subjective intuitive way I work… surfing, snowboarding, skateboarding, and music magazines. I was experimenting in public. Some said some of it worked, some didn’t. But it hit a nerve. I think as we get more tech-orientated, people respond to more personal work. I never learned all the things I wasn’t supposed to do. I just did what made sense to me. My degree is in sociology, which is probably what got me interested in magazines, where you have a real person or story to interpret, as opposed to selling toothpaste.

When everyone started copying you, most — including myself — were just making a mess. What were we doing wrong?

I.D. Magazine said it best when reviewing Fotografiks, the book I did with Philip Meggs. “Fotografiks just shows once again; how easy it is to copy Carson... badly.” It’s so subjective. I rarely feel anything really copies or does what I would have, maybe because I’m really trying to add meaning and emotion. and not simply moving things around until they look cool.

You’re so closely associated with the alternative music of the late 80s and 90s -- the stuff for Ray Gun really defined the genre’s visual aesthetic, along with maybe v23 designs for 4AD. But one of the primary attributes of a lot that music was a raw directness, where your work is so purposefully indirect. Was it really as perfect a fit as seemed?

Yeah. Eye Magazine commented on how Ray Gun was accurately portraying the music in a visual way — successfully to a specific audience. The fit was awfully good, but then so was working years later with Trent Reznor on Fragile. I wasn’t a huge fan of his music, but he felt I had interpreted it in a way that was true to the music — which is the best compliment you can get, I think.

But did you feel a connection to that culture? R. Crumb’s drawings defined the look of the Haight-Asbury counterculture, but he apparently abhorred it. As a surfer, you obviously had a connection with Surfer and Beach Culture…

I can’t work without music, so a lot of it was a natural fit. I got to design for some of my favorite bands. But I did some stuff for bands I didn’t care for that I think worked; and that’s about being a designer; not just a computer page-layout guy. Beach Culture had very little to do with surfing, and by the time I designed Surfer Magazine they were frustratingly conservative, and I was moving into new challenges.

Did you bring anything to design from your experience as a surfer?

Surfers are a surprisingly conservative — sometimes redneck — group. Surfer got tons of hate mail when I redesigned it. And then it quickly got copied by the advertisers and became no big deal. But, maybe I brought an attitude of “why not?” Why not experiment or try something different or something I hadn’t seen before? Experimentation, passion, and a “why not?” attitude, without being all uptight about rules and stuff.

Your bestselling book, The End of Print, would have us believe that you’ve no set of rules. But there must be a starting point in your thinking, right?

Read the article. Look at the art. Listen to the music. The direction or answer always lies within, not in some preset grid or formula. It’s not a matter of trying to break rules. It’s a matter of doing what makes sense to me.

The End of Print completely altered my perspective as young designer — I still keep it close by my desk — but I don’t think I’ve ever actually “read” it. It’s a little frustrating. As beautiful or expressive as your work is, at what point does it stop working as design? Do you care?

Show me a page in End of Print or Ray Gun that you can’t read. If in interpreting something it gets a little harder to read, I don’t have a problem with that. The layout may be helping to communicate more or different information. I always thought the “you can’t read it” chorus was way exaggerated and not accurate. Today we see similar stuff in Cadillac and bank commercials.

It feels highly improvisational, and in that sense it’s in the tradition of other American reinventions of European art forms — Walt Whitman’s free verse, jazz, Jackson Pollock?  You’re subverting form and content to reflect your involvement with it and with your own identity. David Byrne talks about your work as an example of radical design “of and by the people.” Is there something uniquely American going on here?

I guess building you up and tearing you down is American… and British.

Speaking of jazz, it’s interesting that a half century ago when Reid Miles was defining the look we all associate with jazz with designs for Blue Note he was more focused on the elements of rhythm and space. Improvisation wasn’t really a factor, even though the idea was obviously in the air. Why do you think it took so long for the idea of improvisation to creep into print?

Good question. It’s nice to see the idea returning again after a boring few years.

By the end of the 90s and into this decade, design had turned in the opposite direction — to retro modernism and an almost hyper-minimalism. And right now I’m seeing a lot of Romantic and almost Rococo elements, like script fonts and scrolly dingbats. Time recently ran a cover story on the “Return of Design.” Is your revolution over, or is all of this just the fruit of your seed?

The current issue of I.D. Magazine claims no one does what I do as well. Some 15 years after I started, in their selection of my newest book Trek, I think its interesting things are getting more expressive again. But it’s hard to know when you’re in a revolution. I never thought so.

But now everybody has a PC with design software, meaning everybody thinks they’re a designer.

That’s why you’ve got to put yourself into the work let your own personality come through. That’s how you’ll do your best work and have the most fun. Otherwise we don’t really need designers. Anyone can buy the software and do a reasonable page layout or business card.

Web design didn’t even exist when you started out. But your work is so non-linear — it’s always had a multimedia sensibility. Do you think your approach to information anticipated interactive design?

I went to film and titles when everyone went to web design. I found it limiting and frustrating. And if you can’t design, you can always call your self an information architect.

So, where do you see print design going next?

It’s in a good, expressive, almost fine art direction now, and will continue. I think that’s great. What’s after? That is a good question.

And the two most important questions: Mac or PC?

Mac

InDesign or Quark?

Quark. I’m a pretty low-tech guy. •

Originally published in 2005 in Port Folio Weekly