David Carson - Grunge

David Carson an American graphic designer and art director as well as surfer is mostly well known for his modern designs in magazines and experimental typography he uses.
He applied most of the typographic and layout which gave him popularity in the magazine Ray Gun where he was the art director. He is also the so called Godfather of Grunge. This typography style was ubiquitous. He applied a simple method and twofold gospels "you don't have to know the rules before breaking them, and never mistake legibility for communication".
Carson used a particular technique which included ripping, shredding and redoing letter. This technique became nerve touching.
Type design was messy then. Words were chaotic and letters blurred. Thick and heavy textures were used and posters for concerts where like splattered in paint and band names scratched out. This style of typography was the grunge.
Like many of the best things of the 90's the grunge typography was discontented by many. It arrived as a backlash just like how punk music came in. As Carlos Segura, a Chicago based graphic designer put it "It was almost like a societal complaint".
Segura witnessed closely the explosion of the grunge. Designers like Segura felt that everything was getting too clean and that David Carson's design was easy to follow so everyone started to do that 'David Carson look'. The loo was refreshing for some time because it was innovative and new.

Carson used tactics that made his typography easy to be applied by technology.
The popularity of the grunge typography clashed with the famous Macintosh which in 1984 changed the field of graphic design and typography.
Designing art by hand a 'painful craft of precision and consistency' no longer became the only method. Another option was born. Designers felt freed. They now only had to use their imagination and put it on screen. Young typographers in the 90s were fuelled with new software and ideas which they experimented with. They pushed aside rule based fonts which designers before them produced.

Ray Gun magazine - David Carson

Carlos Segura

Bibliography

Neli, 2013. David Carson - The father of Grung. [Online]
Available at: http://nvtodorova.wordpress.com/2013/10/16/david-carson-the-father-of-grunge/