David Carson - The Father of Grunge

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INTRODUCTION

David Carson is a person, who broke the mold of traditional design, without having a proper graphic design education, not knowing the rules of design. He forced typography to change and inspired many creators to redefine what design is. David had an interesting way of creative development, through his design career which he started in 80’s. He commenced his activity as an editorial designer for a very limited audience, and then took his career further, and became highly demanded in more conventional areas of design.
The sub-topic title of this essay is ‘Explosion of subculture’. This metaphor refers to the definition of the process of explosion as an increase in volume and release of energy with destroying itself. It illustrates the process, which took place in many spheres, dealing with subcultures at that time, and in subcultural design of David Carson in particular.
American Heritage Cultural Dictionary gives definition of ‘subculture’ as:
‘A group within a society that has its own shared set of customs, attitudes, and values, often accompanied by jargon slang. A subculture can be organized around a common activity, occupation, age, status, ethnical background, race, religion, or any other unifying social condition…’
Subcultures are hidden or beneath the principal culture, and they preserve their authenticity. They deal with private attributes, which are valuable because of their uniqueness. In other words, the sense of belonging supports their existence.
‘Explosion of subculture’ in this case refers to the process of cultural appropriation of subcultural attributes, which leads to expansion and extermination.

SUBCULTURES AND ZEITGEIST

Subjective design

David Carson is known best for radical and highly ...

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Lewis Blackwell, David Carson, ‘The End of Print: The Grafik Design of David Carson’, Edition 2, Laurence King Publishing, 2000, ISBN: 1 85669 216 7

David Carson: Design, discovery and humor (video), TED Talks, 2003 http://www.ted.com/talks/david_carson_on_design.html William Hazlitt, ‘Sketches and Essays’, 1839, ‘On Taste’
Oxford Treasury of Sayings and Quotations [online] Available at: http://books.google.com

Steven Heller, ‘Cult of the Ugly’, first time published in Eye No. 9, Vol. 3, 1993
[online] Available at: https://www.typotheque.com/site/articles.php?id=68

Steven Heller, ‘Design Literacy: Understanding Graphic Design’, Allworth Press, 2004

Moritz von Oswald, ‘Where is the Underground?’ [online] Available at: http://journalofmusic.com/focus/where-underground

Dan Webber, ‘The Psyche’, [online] Available at: http://webber.net.au/The-Psyche.html

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