By Kirti Bansal“NOT KNOWING LEGIBILITY FOR COMMUNICATION”-DAVID CARSONRules are made to be followed, right? No. According to surfer-turned-designer David Carson, rules are meant to be broken, not followed. Carson's explorations in the alternative rock and roll magazine Ray Gun pushed the boundaries so far that they yielded catastrophically pleasing results. The pinnacle of David Carson's career began with his most recognized work in Beach Culture while running a surf magazine. His creative and radical contributions to the realm of graphic design and communications have produced relatively extreme results. Carson's unconventional style revolutionized visual communication in the 1990s. In the years leading up to his career, American designer David Carson could be seen surfing the waves at the beaches of San Diego, California, while holding down a job as a high school teacher. The influence of his talent can be traced back to a short commercial design course he enrolled in. He later worked as a designer at a small surfer magazine, Self and Musician, where his experiments really began. A painter in disguise, some would say: David Carson practiced communicative typographic structures the way an artist used paint to create expressive compositions. Carson often extracted ordinary objects for his composition by overlaying them with text, though often illegible to the viewer, within, alongside, above and below the image. A handwritten quality while, at other times, his choice was rigorous typewriter fonts with a mixture of uppercase and lowercase letters. Carson tested the boundaries of typography, causing typed lines to cross, cross, or be reversed. He layered characters and images until neither was distinguishable on the page and in the center of the paper in the graphic design industry. Designers and those interested in graphic arts are drawn to his pieces and overall style. Carson's impact on the design community is evident in his design style as well as his ability to share his talent and knowledge with others through his books. The American Center of Design has featured numerous works by Carson in its annual exhibition. In 1996 it was determined that Carson's new work was "the most important work in this year's exhibition." A London publication called his work “the most important work to come out of America” and named him “Art Director of the Age.” Carson later became the creative director of the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston and currently owns David Carson Design where he is the lead designer. He now owns two personal design studios and still creates his signature style designs today.