David Carson was born in Corpus Christi, Texas in 1954 and spent his twenties as a professional surfer — ranked inside the world top ten in 1989. He took a B.A. in Sociology from San Diego State University in 1977, and had no formal design training. The craft was entirely self-taught, picked up through short workshops and editorial commissions.
His first design job of consequence was art director of Transworld Skateboarding from 1983 to 1987 — four years of loose, expressive editorial layout that looked nothing like the mainstream magazine world of the time. He moved to the short-lived surf-culture quarterly Beach Culture from 1989 to 1991. Six issues, more than 150 awards, and a first wave of design-press attention outside California.
The defining role came in 1992, when he launched Ray Gun magazine in Los Angeles as founding art director. Thirty issues across four years turned him into one of the most imitated — and most argued-about — designers on the planet. Carson left Ray Gun in 1996 to open his own studio in New York, David Carson Design, and has worked commercially since for Nike, Pepsi, Microsoft, Armani, MTV, Levi’s, Sony, AT&T and Citibank. He remains professionally active.
