Some would argue that David Carson is not a typographer, for he did not design a typeface but rather relied on the deconstruction of Émigré fonts, intuitively infusing them into abstraction that was to be more interpreted and admired than read. For this same reason, and the fact that he received no formal design education, leads some to argue that he is also not a true graphic designer.

In his early 20’s, Carson did receive a degree in Sociology and became a high school teacher teaching Sociology, Psychology, and Economics in Grants Pass, Oregon. It wasn’t until he attended a two week design course for high school students that he graphically designed anything, and the term was unknown to him until he was 26. The course led him to quit teaching and enroll in the San Diego State University design program. Less than a month later, he transferred to the Ashland College of Commercial Art in Oregon on the suggestion and financial funding of his grandmother. During his schooling there he sent out samples of his work to Paul Haven, an art director for Surfer Publications. Impressed with Carson’s work and dissatisfied with an associate art director working for him, Haven asked Carson to keep in touch while he worked on laying off the associate art director. Carson jumped the gun, quit school, moved back to San Diego, and worked for Haven as an unpaid intern until he was able to take over as the new associate art director. His assignment under the new promotion was to art direct Skateboarder magazine. The magazine struggled to restructure as the newly titled Actionnow and eventually ceased publication. Carson was laid off and went to work as a substitute teacher at the local high school, while also working on Transworld Skateboarding magazine on his days off and evenings. The 200 page monthly Transworld Skateboarding magazine, unlike Skateboarder, carried no budget, and relied heavily on the content generated by the skateboarding community. Carson was allowed ample room to creatively express. He soon juggled time between his soon-to-be full time position as a teacher and a full time workload for the magazine. In the middle of his second year teaching in California, he left to art direct for Musician magazine near Gloucester, Massachusetts. Despite raising newsstand sales with his unique art direction, after 18 issues he was laid off for being too extreme. Carson then went to work as an art director for Self magazine for less than a month, voluntarily resigning because he found the work boring.

Carson moved back to California to work on Beach Culture magazine, a magazine that covered surfing, local fashion, and music. Before it folded in 1991, Carson art-directed 6 issues, of which won over 150 design awards. While still working for Surfer magazine, Carson also began commissioned work for Ray Gun magazine, where he completely redesigned its layout and look and feel.

The Carson look and feel is all about deconstruction, comparable in some respects to the Dadaist movement. Carson’s work can be best described as raising “illegibility to an art form” (The Font of Youth). Type is distorted, blurred, twisted, cropped, and completely thrown out of whack. In Carson‘s designs, all things typography appear to be all things without rules. This is not to say they are without function or purpose. Carson works with an intuitive grid, playing type as form, and interacting type with image. Capital letters are mixed with lowercase, leading is experimented with, type is overlaid, and words are cropped, disjointed, and crammed into each other. It’s as if Carson sees type as not a body of content, but as expressionist content defined in its mere existence on the page. He knows how fickle and inattentive his audience, is. Do we really read this stuff? A Carson- designed 1994 spread in Ray Gun focuses more on a general message depicted by its design, than what we can read in its authored content. The article is written in the utterly undecipherable pictogram font of Zapf Dingbats. Carson addresses design as a voice, type as expression. In another Carson spread, this one about anonymous surfers, all the images have their heads cropped out. A spread about blind surfers is designed as two all black pages. As one designer said ” some of Carson’s work evokes the type play of Modernist maker Paul Rand” (Carson Ascendant). Part of the appeal of Carson’s work is that it comes across as spontaneous, expressionist, thought-provoking, and purposefully illegible.

Famous typographer William Caslon was purposefully legible. Caslon was born in 1692 in Worcestershire, England. In 1706 he began a six year apprenticeship with a London harness maker and then as an engraver of gunlocks and barrels. Caslon relied heavily on readily available Dutch fonts. In 1716 he opened his own engraving shop in London where he began to experiment with engraved type. His work came to the attention of printer John Walter and soon he was commissioned to cut type punches for various presses in London. In 1720, Caslon designed his first typeface, an “English Arabic” that was used in a Psalter and a New Testament. These printed materials were to accompany missionaries to the Far East. In 1722, Caslon cut the typeface that later became known, in 1726, under his namesake. The success of Caslon – its refined legibility – forwarded him enough funding to open up his own type foundry. His type foundry, which continued to operate for over 200 years, under the tutelage of his descendants, monopolized much of the typography industry in London from 1720-1780. Most English books bore his foundry’s typefaces. Caslon’s popularity spread and his typefaces can be seen throughout history on such articles as the Declaration of Independence and the Liberty Bell. In 1734, Caslon’s first specimen sheet rolled out with 47 roman and italic types in 14 different sizes.

Caslon‘s typefaces are loved because they are friendly, warm, legible, and easy on the eyes. Despite having delicate nuances, they are still very much elegantly refined. The Caslon foundry is responsible for over 1700 fonts – each character in each size once cut by hand into a metal punch. On inspection one would notice differences of various point sizes in lowercase letters such as the “e”. This has been something that has been difficult to emulate in recent digital renditions. The Caslon 540 Roman typeface has a slightly extended lowercase, a shorter x-height, and several notable discrepancies in lettering that provide indiscriminate variety. The capital Q has a unique swash-like tail. The apex of the capital A is quietly different, but elegant – a calligraphic notch. The capital T is broad and the teardrop terminals on the small case f and c are delicately full. The slightly heavier weight of thick strokes on Caslon typefaces add legibility and make them well-suited for body text.

Caslon, like Carson, was seen as having somewhat different design resolutions to commercial methods of his time. Caslon “modeled his letter on Dutch types, they were much better; for he introduced into his fonts a quality of interest, a variety of design, and a delicacy of modeling, which few Dutch types possessed” (Caslon Redux).

Caslon outreached his comfort zone, bringing a new awareness to the printing industry. Yet, unlike David Carson, Caslon’s different approach was more widely received and accepted. Regal and solid, Caslon type could be seen throughout the legal, governmental, and religious institutions of the world, and the printing industry was enamored. George Bernard Shaw refused any other typeface within his books.

Today, the Caslon type family remains resilient; a standard to look to. It is not unusual that several more modern fonts, such as Garamond and Benguit, find influence from it. Other typefaces such as ITC Caslon, struggle to replicate its intricacies.

David Carson’s typographic solutions, on the other hand, still continue to irritate parts of the design community. Carson’s work struggles to find a solid, respectable position. Carson’s lack of legibility is found as somewhat pretentious and without proper function. However, even so, it isn’t entirely revolutionary. “If you look back at the Dadaists and the futurists in the 1910’s” says ARTnews design director David Walter, “they were doing things that were more unreadable. And maybe Carson is not always so unreadable as “his readers rarely find insufficient optical contrast between type and background, and his messages are not beyond deciphering” (Carson Ascendant).

William Caslon and David Carson, one the master of refined legibility, and the other the guru of intuitive illegibility, had similar goals – each to break outside the confining boxes of what had become all too industry standards in their generation. Caslon tried to work out from under the monotonous form of Dutch engraved type, and Carson ignored the modernist grids of corporate design.

In the world of magazines, genre is a definitive factor that can make or break a publication. An ill-defined genre can swallow a whole publication and a unique genre can carry a magazine into its golden years as an iconic regional or national symbol. Two magazines, Omni and Wired magazine exist or existed, with similar defining genre. Omni, now out of print as well as Internet publication, was defined as “an original, if not controversial mixture of science fact, fiction, fantasy, and the paranormal” (Guiccione, B. first word., Omni 1(1):6; October 1978). Wired magazine is known for reporting on how technology affects culture, the economy, and politics. Both publications express concern, enthusiastically and/or apprehensively over technology in the world today, but their vision, style and editorial content differ in several ways.

Omni magazine embraced technology as seen through the eyes of the armchair scientist and held skeptical, but respectful criticism for what may have bent outside defined “science”. Omni magazine launched in October 1978 as the brainchild publication of Kathy Keeton Guiccione, wife of Bob Guiccione, of Penthouse, Longevity, and Compute magazines. Together, the publications were housed under Guiccione’s General Media. Omni magazine was initially named Nova, but in order to avoid possible litigation with a new PBS science show, the name was soon changed. Omni quickly became a success. Its pages not only discovered the latest scientific and technological news, but also featured Q & A interviews with the most prestigious scientists of the 20^th century. Also published in Omni were short stories, sometimes serialized, from top science fiction authors, and awe-inspiring artwork from some of the most talented illustrators of the century. Omni’s style, edgy and sophisticated, was compared often to its up and coming nemesis, Wired magazine. Omni’s content was expertly inquisitive, yet written at a more natural level than the professionally geared Scientific American and New Scientist. The articles were credible sources, often contributed by some of the world’s leading scientific minds. Interviews spanned all “scientific” realms, from Noble prizewinners to UFO crackpots. Many times Omni introduced new scientific concepts before they became well known. As seen in an ad for CompuServe, from a 1985 Omni, the concept of a search engine to find online finance, travel info, games, and images was introduced. One blogger from craftbox.com commented that his favorite issue of Omni, November 1986, featured an article that was called “Tiny Tech”, the first to describe the fundamentals of nanotechnology.

In the beginning, and for most of Omni’s history, the magazine dedicated much of its content to true scientific news, however, as interesting as the articles were, they were never as outlandish as the pseudoscience Omni began to write about in its later years. Although Omni remained skeptical on paranormal and alien-ic news, their increasing interest hurt their credibility. The print side of Omni folded in the winter of 1995, and the magazine continued to only exist on the Internet until 1998. In some ways, although no longer a tactile publication, the magazine presence experienced a small rebirth. Participating in the Internet helped rekindle admiration for the magazine’s dedication to all things cyberspace.

Being on the Internet allowed Omni to take more risks and refocus on what it had once been, “home of gonzo science writing” (www.nationmaster.com). Their Internet presence covered up to the minute science news, chats with top scientists, blogs by scientific professionals, user interactive experiments, and online stories by revered science fiction writers. Despite excitement, the online Omni ceased to turn a profit, and was immediately yanked after its founding mother, Kathy Keeton Guiccione passed away from complications of breast cancer in 1998.

Like Omni magazine, Wired magazine was dedicated to cyberspace, but their passion for the most part was an initial inspiration largely captured in their vision. Whereas Omni magazine focused on scientific technology, Wired writes about Internet technology and technological gadgets. Where Omni had focused on the make up of science, such as astronomical material, Wired magazine breaks down the chemical components of everyday items, one example being Cool Whip, in their “What’s Inside” section. Where Omni may have asked the Whys, Wired asks the Whats and Hows? Omni magazine was edgy in its day, taking advantage of glossy black pages dripping in the illustrative essence of Chris Moore, with cutting edge scientific articles written about Earth, astronomy, and biomedicine. Omni magazine was like Discover’s long lost doppelganger, only with a twist. Even more accurately, Omni was the like the older, inspirational brother of today’s Wired Magazine.

Wired magazine was first published in 1993, under the large conglomerate of Conde Nast Publications. From it’s beginning, it was paralleled with an Internet version entitled Wired News. In July 2006, Conde Nast decided to complete ownership by buying Wired News for $25 million. Much of the articles featured on Wired News had been reprints of printed articles in Wired magazine.

Wired magazine has held a unique position in the technological world, grasping scientific news and infusing libertarian and techno-obsessed interpretation. By 1997, the magazine had won two National Magazine Awards for General Excellence. Much of Wired’s content is being driven by founding Executive editor, Kevin Kelly (by no means a conservative author). As also William Gibson, whose Wired article “Disneyland with the Death Penalty” banned Wired from Singapore. Wired magazine soon earned a reputation as a “gonzo” magazine of its own, unrivaled in some aspects, but still compared often to Omni. With a much less “nerdy” readership than Omni’s – think more “Geek chic”, think Bill Gates meets Jon Stewart, Wired became a flattering angle to rising geekdom. Like Omni magazine, some of the articles featured in Wired have been technologically inspiring, writing about technology unheard of or underappreciated. The April 2003 “ Welcome to the Hydrogen Economy” amongst readers, opened up discussion on hydrogen power, while the November 2003 “Open Source Everywhere” declared open source as the “hot” direction cyberspace was moving into. With articles written about the political and social benefits of carbon-cutting science, how to self promote oneself by becoming a myspace whore, and high profile interviews with geeky geniuses like Peter Jackson and George Church, Wired magazine helped spur an underdog movement where the tech and internet obsessed gain elite status, oozing the zippie bourgeois of apple products, hybrid cars, and unlimited RAM.

Omni magazine was always a beautifully graphic magazine, but in many ways dated itself with robotic fantasy illustrations and “Tron” stylized typography, overzealously celebrating the kinky odd sexuality of the late 70’s and early 80’s. Wired magazine is just as, and in some respects more so, graphically beautiful. Wired magazine has consistently pushed and played with the envelope, outputting design that is timeless, redefining, and admirably well thought out. Sometimes criticized for being too risky, they have managed to create culturally and socially dynamic graphic content. Hot and metallic dyes embrace their pages, with graphic elements mirroring Internet design. For the first five years of its life, Wired magazine laid at the mercy of its founding designers, John Plunkett and Barbara Kuhr (Plunkett and Kuhr). Together they created an iconic brand logo, readily familiar to the masses. The magazine layout draws a likeness from the design catalogs of David Carson, April Greiman, and Paul Rand – with geometric linear styling, innovative typographic playground moves, and clean, practical merging of the graphic and photographic. Its pages, consciously and artfully directed, have garnered Wired at least one design award in its first four years.

Wired magazine has always stayed in touch with the media, even more pronounced in their Internet identity. Wired News follows a similar clean format to its print version, while also preserving the user-friendly sophistication necessary in an Internet site. Wired magazine at first downplayed their Internet preoccupation. However, they were the first magazine to list the email addresses of their authors and contributors, and created a section by their third issue, entitled “Net Surf”, that listed interesting FTP sites. A companion website, Hot Wired, helped spur the creation of several other websites and search engines, including suck.com and Hotbot.

Wired magazine was to become a magazine heavily involved with its readership. Until 1995, Omni could only reach their audience through glossy pages. Their joining the internet came too late when their following was already fading. Wired magazine has not only engaged their readership, but their advertisers and contributors as well. To be seen or read in Wired is a misfit honor. Like Omni, Wired had also had its fair share of innovative advertisers, such as Apple, Intel, and Sony. Unlike Omni, it also has had a fair amount of fashionista hip advertisers, such as Calvin Klein and Absolut, who only hope to ride the cool wave into a newly tapped market.

Omni magazine folded under terms within its own control, while Wired magazine has seen its own share of troubling times, particularly during the dotcom crash of the late 90’s. Because of innovative editorials, risky, yet interesting articles, and design savvy, Wired has managed to outlast its competitors through such hard times and become the notable publication it is today.

- Simson Garfunkel – Wired Magazine 11.08.05 ” History’s Worst Software Bugs”

In dojo, you will have a div typically called your header in which you can place a menu containing div. In our example, we will call this class “tabHeader”. We will give the class the following details:

.tabHeader {
float: left;
width: 729px;
margin-top:22px;
font-size:xx%;
line-height:normal;
}

In the css sliding door method, the tabbed menu is a magical dance of background images overlapping at the appropriate moments contained within an outer div, such as our div class “.tabHeader”. Because dojo css is different than html css, we have to adjust the css to fit the styling language of dojo widgets. We will still achieve the greal load optimization of the css sliding door effect. Dojo css is heavily dependent on relevancy states and parent/child relationship styles. It may seem daunting and confusing at first, but it actually makes more practical sense and will nicely adhere to WC3 usability guidelines.

We will next set the css of the unordered list: margins and padding to 0 and list-style to none. For dojo we can use the div class “.tabHeader” as the relevant class for the unordered list:

.tabHeader ul {
margin:0;
padding:0;
list-style:none;
}

Instead of using a “.class a” style to contain our left half of the sliding door, in dojo we will create just another class and write it like this:

.tabHeader .tabItemContainer {
float:left;
background:url(images/image.png) no-repeat top left;
margin-left:5px;
padding: 0 0 0 5px;
font-weight:bold;
color:#hex;
text-decoration:none;
cursor:pointer;
}

Think of “.tabItemContainer” as your “a” link class. See how we pop the class “.tabHeader” in front of the “.tabItemContainer”? He’s a parent and also a child class. His parent is the div class “header”. Now if you would like a background for the unordered list, because you are using png’s for the sliding doors, you have to set a class for the background image. Kinda weird, but that’s dojo for you.

.tabHeader .tabItemContainer .tabBackground {
background:url(images/rightHalf.png) no-repeat;
}

Now the css sliding door effect relies on an oversized background image that slides out as the title text gets longer. Even though we have styled a class for this expanding right side, we have only styled its background image. Dojo calls for another class to style a container for the text. It will follow the link class “.tabItemContainer” as such:

.tabHeader .tabItemContainer .tabItemContent {
display:block;
background-position:top right;
padding:5px 15px 4px 10px;
font-weight:bold;
color:#hex;
text-decoration:none;
}

In this example the class “.tabItemContent” is similiar to a list class in html. The css sliding door effect depends not only on a background image, but also the background positioning of that image:

.tabHeader .tabItemContainer:hover {
background-position:0% -36px;
}

and background positioning of contained text:

.tabHeader .tabItemContainer:hover .tabItemContent {
background-positioning:100% -36px;
color:#hex;
}

The background image is 36px tall. Stacking an inactive state background image atop a hover state background image contributes to the css sliding door effect. In my example I have chosen to use a separate tab appearance for “current” state that is different for each page. The “current” class works for tabs that are differentiated only by their text, while separate classes are used for tabs that not only change in textual appearance, but may also contain a rollover image:

.tabHeader .current {
background-position:0% -36px;
font-weight:bold;
color:#hex;
text-decoration:none;
}

.tabHeader .current .tabItemContent {
background-position:100% -36px;
padding-bottom:5px;
font-weight:bold;
color:#hex;
text-decoration:none;
}

.tabHeader .tabItemContainer .secondTab {
background-image:url(images/second.png);
padding-right:40px;
}

Since only the background images are changing, and not the appearance of the text, with states, we only have to create classes for the right side background images. If you wanted to have different textual appearances for the state changes you would have to add in the following class:

.tabHeader .tabItemContainer .secondTab {
color:#hex;
font-weight:100;
}

and then change its color also in a “.tabHeader .tabItemContainer:hover .secondTab” class.

Despite Obama’s and McCain’s promise of counteractive proposals consisting of either tax cuts, tax breaks, and/or government sponsored health care, we as designers, will have to step up, gather our strengths, and smack them down on the desks of prospective employers. Even if it comes across as a bit ballsy, we will be forced to prove how indispensable we truly are. The market is going to get even more competitive. Anything that can be freelanced will be freelanced. Anything that can be contracted, will be contracted. Small or large, businesses will struggle, and in their desperate gasps for air, they will first cut advertising. They always do and we always feel a little strain from it. Even though cutting advertising can be like cutting an artery on branding, companies tend to see advertising as a frivolous expense, followed by marketing and large unproductive salaries. In difficult times, struggling companies tend to want to allocate most of corporate budget to product sustenance.

The truth of the matter is that most designers will never work for large companies, and even more will freelance at one point in their careers. We will freelance even while holding down full time positions with brick and mortar businesses. We are an adaptive breed who typically never hold down the same job for more than two years. We are used to the ebb and flow of small and large businesses. We secretly relish starter ups because they allow us to grow without outdated commitments. We expect change. It inspires us, keeps our easily bored selves religiously happy.

As promising as government aided public health care appears on paper, it means for us that getting even shitty health care will be a little harder than before. Many designers work for small companies that already bend over backwards to pay half of our health care expenses. Some designers pay for their own health care because they work for themselves. According to the AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts) 2007 Salary Survey, as much as 36% of designers freelance. 19% of designers work in offices with less than 10 employees. 24% work for companies with less than 100 employees.  More than half of designers will carry insurance if working for someone else than themselves, and primarily, it will be only individual coverage. I don’t have to summarize what this all means for designers, except to reiterate that the industry is going to get even more competitive.

As if we don’t wear a lot of hats. We will have to tighten the one we wear for ourselves. It will be uncanny that the biggest product we will design may be ourselves. The next four years are going to be tough.