notes from david carson's

David Carson spoke to AIGA Colorado at the Oxford Hotel in Denver last night. my friend Jenny and I drove up for the occasion. here are a few notes/thoughts...

he quoted lots of intuition, inspiration, gut-instinct sorts of quotes from people like albert einstein and paul rand. I liked one enough to write down, but I'm not sure who said it. man works when he is partially involved. when he is fully involved it is either play or leisure.

he kept stressing emotion and personality in design work. valuable words from a successful designer (though sometimes he prefers "graphic artist," a term I usually look down upon) with no formal design education. he said he reads the articles, listens to the music, embraces himself in the subject (I'm always surprised at how many designers don't do this). how does it make you feel and what does that look like? all about translating the emotional experience into something so visual that it only enhances what's being presented by other means (verbally or acoustically).

he started Transworld Snowboarding, worked on Transworld Skateboarding, Nine Inch Nails albums, he named Bush (and designed Sixteen Stone), but also did branding work for Microsoft, which is pretty funny to share with a room full of 400 mac-friendly, apple-loving designers. he doesn't believe in grids, or seem to understand them, and it works. for him at least. his magazine layouts and book covers are all seemingly unorganized and haphazard. but really there are general intuitive artistic elements in repeating colors, shapes, distorting text. etc. however, I was bothered by the fact that he doesn't mind distorting text so much that it's illegible. and his videos seemed amateurish, very print-designer-trying-to-do-video. he noted that there are a million b-rate magazines out there now. they're all just fine. but there are few that are a-level, or really doing much innovative work. he notes rothko, rauchenberg, and rand as inspiring. he has to work with music. and always does a lot of designs, lots of printing and looking and pinning-up and mulling over designs as he processes through finding the right one.

I'm now going to go design a semi-legible magazine article and/or book cover.
just for fun.

ps. while browsing for an image to top this article, I learned that he designed blue magazine! how fitting.