David Carson, who is widely considered the most influential graphic designer working today, revealed to 'Guess,' a regular user on TheFragile.com's discussion board, that he has been working with Nine Inch Nails on the highly anticipated Fragility DVD tour documentary, which Carson's official site mentioned mid October at DavidCarsonDesign.com.
Carson was invited to speak about graphic design at his former Sheridan College in Oakville, Canada in September and spoke with Guess following the seminar. "He told me that he designed the video that played during Fragile concert (the water sequence)," which Carson originally revealed during a presentation at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City on November 4th '99, "as well as the one minute Fragile promo for MTV and the design for nin.com is also his work."
Carson explained at last year's New Museum seminar that the footage for "The Great Below" and "La Mer" was shot from 3 friends who he felt are some of the best surf filmmakers around. He asked them for footage they took that they were unable to use on other projects. Carson then assembled the footage into what we saw during the fragility tour backdrop projections.
David Carson collaborated with New York-based visual effects and design studio Manhattan Transfer to create a 30-second promotion for "The Fragile," which fans can download the 5.0 MB commercial of "The Way Out Is Through," if you never caught it yourself on September 9th '99 at the MTV Video Music Awards. Carson explained at last year's New Museum seminar that Trent Reznor was shot in a closet with a Hi-8 video camera, with only two days to make the commercial. That was also the year that marked NIN's first televised awards show appearance.
Guess also brought back home some cool momentous from the Sheridan college seminar such as a David Carson autographed Fragile notebook and a very confident photo with the amazing graphic design artist, which fans can check out on his personal website.
According to a newsletter I received late last month, Carson has been named creative director for Quiksilver clothing, and is currently working on a 500-page book of Marshall McLuen quotes. The man is also working on a new book showing the best New York graffiti/artists work from New York and Carson will be judging the flash film festival in Barcelona next spring. He is also working on some type design work for a series of TV advertisements for Verizon Communications, and a feature in the magazine Surfers Journal not to mention he just completed the cover design for the UCLA winter extension program.
Carson is also happy to report he caught the first wave of the first swell of the new season while surfing in the West Indies a month ago. He's now back in his New York studio, where he recently completed an interview with the Dutch magazine Credits (Amsterdam) before he headed to Korea two weeks ago.
Stay tuned for rare David Carson posters; artwork and rare issues of magazines he's designed will all be available soon via his official site.
For more information about the New Museum of Contemporary Art seminar Carson gave last year where he talks a great deal about the Fragile artwork, please read our November 5th headline "Full David Carson Details: New Backdrop Video For Tour, Explanations To Artwork & More."
Pick up a copy of Carson's latest book, Fotografiks, which features strangely familiar but often enigmatic pictures that reveal his acutely sensitive response to shapes, colors, shadows and light. They are a new expression of Carson's famously individual way of seeing, an expose of his experiments with spontaneity and a compelling display of his skill in creating a dialog between words and pictures.
