Before David Carson ever touched a layout, he was reading waves. A ranked professional surfer who cracked the world's top ten, Carson came to graphic design the way most great things happen — sideways, through a side door, on his own terms. A sociology grad from San Diego State who stumbled into a two-week design workshop and never fully came back, he spent his formative years deep inside the surf and skate subcultures of Southern California with Surfer magazine, eventually channeling all of that kinetic, anti-establishment energy into the pages of Transworld Skateboarding, Beach Culture, and then, the one that changed everything — Ray Gun magazine.

At Ray Gun, Carson didn't just art direct. He detonated. His precedent setting layouts were collage in motion, fractured, layered, typographically feral, and so gloriously indifferent to readability. David Carson profoundly influenced graphic design forever beginning in the 90s. He famously set an entire interview in Zapf Dingbats, a font of symbols and ornaments because he found the conversation boring and thought the reader deserved to be told that visually. They printed it and Ray Gun's circulation tripled. The design world lost its mind. Newsweek said he changed the public face of graphic design. Creative Review called him the art director of the era. The American Center for Design declared his work the most important coming out of America.

What followed was a career so big it barely fits a page. He took his anti-grid gospel to Nike, Pepsi, Levi's, Microsoft, Mercedes-Benz, Ray-Ban, and Quiksilver. Proof to the world that creative rebellion, when it's authentic, is the most persuasive language there is. He collaborated with Nine Inch Nails on the visual identity of The Fragile, designed surfboards, shot photography across the globe, and published a body of books — The End of Print, 2nd Sight, Fotografiks, Trek that have lived on design school shelves and in studio corners ever since.

His most recent work, nu collage, strips away the clients and the briefs entirely, leaving just Carson doing what he's always essentially done: tearing the world apart and reassembling it into something that hits you somewhere beneath the rational mind. He spends winters on a surf break in the British Virgin Islands. He is still watching waves and wracking time on the water. He was awarded the AIGA Gold Medal in 2014, the field's highest honor and he remains, as busy and creative as ever, coming off collabs rebranding Macallan and projects with Porsche Quiksilver and a few he can’t mention yet. David is a sought after guest speaker and will be appearing at the upcoming Cannes Advertising Awards, as well as doing a series of new collages for a new ad agency launch in Madrid this summer.

A few years ago in a sandy beach bar in the BVI, a friend introduced us to David over a few Caribs. When the idea to do a collage exhibition emerged, one of David’s reels popped up. He is jurying TORN because collage is, and always has been, where he lives and we thought he’d be the greatest person we could have.

Images: David Carson