Filed under: Design, Events | Tags: Design, quark, david carson, event, student, Adobe, i love design, Peter Saville, Chip Kidd, graphic design, seminar, experience, graphic, hero, influential, Quark XPress, ilovedesign.com, Carson, InDesign
…and when I say ‘meet’, I mean kind of saw from a distance… …and when I say ‘hero’, I mean graphic designer I have definitely heard of.
On Wednesday night me and a couple of colleagues were given the opportunity to see the ‘most influential graphic designer of today’, talk about his work in Hammersmith. As a mere student/scavenger, I know when I see an offer I can’t refuse/normally afford, so I took my chance.
The three hour seminar (by neoco client Quark XPress & I Love Design) provided us with a glimpse at the ‘chaotic’ world of David Carson and some of his favourite work. Two hours in, after the projector had jammed for the fourth time, the audience didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, although fortunately the majority did the former. It was hard not to chuckle when the old machine was literally throwing slides of his work across the room, and vibrating on the spot. Luckily David saw the funny side too.
David Carson was undoubtedly entertaining and certainly had some great work to show and some interesting stories to tell, even if half of them were about his latest surfing accident in California. He liked to use images of his wounds to wake the audience up, which reminded me of when your at school and you want to show your best mate your biggest scab. He seemed to ‘potter about’ a bit too much though, fiddling with things on his desktop, unsure of where files were and you couldn’t help think it might have been an act. When he did get down to showing his work though it was very interesting to see his how he worked through a project and what his relationships with the clients were like.
At one point he made some refreshingly down to earth comments about having to (to paraphrase) bullshit clients. It was moments like these he connected to the audience at a personal level and won us over a bit. I think it would have been better if it was half as long though, leaving you wanting more rather than wanting to leave (which people had to towards the end).
Despite all the subtle hints of the staff (‘we should probably wrap it up now’), he didn’t want the show to end. When it eventually did, some of the hardcore fans queued up to buy some one-off pieces of work which he signed. I managed to capture him amidst his glory. I’m definitely glad I went and it was a great experience for me. So thanks again to the team down here at Neoco!
“A big part of being a designer is seeing stuff which is around you and incorporating it in your own way in your work…”
“…your family, how you grew up, these are the things which are unique to you, no one else has these things so use them in your work“
“a design shouldn’t necessarily be timeless, the fact that it relates to the culture of it’s time is often what makes a design successful”
David Carson 18th June 2008
