David Carson

David Carson is an American graphic designer, best known for his innovative magazine design and use of experimental typography. He art directed various music, skateboarding and surfing magazines through the 1980s and most famously the style magazine "Ray gun" (1992-5). His layouts featured distortions or mixes of "venacular" typefaces and fractured imagery.

Plazm is a design and culture magazine which has been published by a collective of designers since 1991 . The image to the left is a cover design by David Carson for issue 16 (1997) of the magazine.

The cover is very simplistic, the photo is the main focus which is very hard to understand, a convention of Carson's style. The Image appears to be of a man's head in a waste paper basket, concealed by a newspaper. The framing is closed as due to the dark lighting it is very difficult to see any of the background. The object in the bin is possibly a manakin's head and wig, but Carson does successfully achieve a realistic perspective. The combed back hair of the head, suggests sophistication, and put into context with the wastepaper bin and newspaper, cultural connotations suggest it is a business/office worker. What is also interesting about the newspaper is that none of the text is legible as this is not meant to give meaning or context to the picture, making it more difficult to give deeper meaning to the image.

The smaller heading under the title suggests the subject of the picture and possibly alludes to material inside the magazine. "No more heroes" suggests that the head in the bin is that of one of these heroes, an office worker, who has been discarded and disposed of.

The lowercase text, white in colour and very bold, stands out against the dark background photo. The text, although distorted, is still readable as the first section of the title is higher than the second, leading the eye to read the top part first.

Sources:

http://www.davidcarsondesign.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Carson_(graphic_designer)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plazm_(magazine)
http://www.plazm.com/magazine/back-issues/plazm-16