David Carson.

David Carson is an American graphic designer. He is best known for his innovative magazine design, and use of experimental typography. He was the art director for the magazine Ray Gun. Carson was perhaps the most influential graphic designer of the nineties. In particular, his widely-imitated aesthetic defined the so-called "grunge" era.

He became renowned for his inventive graphics in the 1990s. Having worked as a sociology teacher and professional surfer in the late 1970s, he art directed various music, skateboarding and surfing magazines through the 1980s. As art director of surfing magazines and more famously style magazine Ray Gun (1992-5), Carson came to worldwide attention. His layouts featured distortions or mixes of 'vernacular' typefaces and fractured imagery, rendering them almost illegible. Indeed, his maxim of the 'end of print' questioned the role of type in the emergent age of digital design, following on from California New Wave and coinciding with experiments at the Cranbrook Academy of Art. In the later 1990s he shifted from 'surf subculture' to corporate work for Nike, Levis, and Citibank.

His unique style has been called illegible. Rules of design are constantly and consistently broken in Carson's work. He would let typed lines run into each other, cross gutters, or be upside-down. He would layer type and image until neither was distinguishable on the page and even continued an article on the front cover of a magazine. Carson has never believed that one must first know the rules in order to break them.

During the period of 1989 – 2004, David Carson has won over 170 Awards for his work in graphic design. Some of these awards include:

* Best Overall Design, Society of Publication Designers in New York.
* Cover of the Year, Society of Publication Designers in New York.
* Award of Best Use of Photography in Graphic Design
* Designer of the Year 1998, International Center of Photography
* Designer of the Year 1999, International Center of Photography
* Master of Typography, Graphics magazine (NY)
* The most famous graphic designer on the planet, April 2004 - London Creative Review magazine (London)