Homage to David Carson

For this project, we were given a choice between creating an homage to David Carson or Stefan Sagmeister. I chose David Carson because I find his aesthetic to be intriguing. What I find most interesting about David Carson is his apparent disregard for the traditional "rules" of graphic design and typography. I have always had a problem with operating outside of a strict set of rules. He takes a lot of risks with type legibility and color.

I also like the way he integrates photographs into his designs, making them an integrated part of his layouts rather than completely separate entities. Since I am more of an illustrator I appreciate the ability to make a photograph more of a design element than just slapping it on the page. I want to play with coloring over and placing lineart on top of photographs.

Based on the two paragraphs above, I worked on formulating my poster design. I created three thumbnails, though I honestly loved the first from the beginning and I think everyone agreed that it was the best option.


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The other two explored illustrating his use of puns in his work and also the fact that he helped usher in the "grunge" era with his convention-defying, dirty aesthetic.


(click for full size)

I really like how this one came together. All of the techniques I used were observed in Carson's work (photograph integration, coloring/drawing over low quality photographs, making layout guides apparent), but I tried to put my own spin on it. I also used a couple of letters from that hand-drawn font I created :) Dave suggested I offset the lineart a bit from the photo when I was drawing over it, and make it more sketchy. I think both suggestions worked very well.