Influential Designers: Day 3

We had our third day of influential designer presentations on Monday May 11. The class heard about Tibor Kalman, David Carson , and Matthew Carter.


Tibor Kalman was born in Hungary, but grew up and attended school in New York where he spent an isolated childhood. He put all his time alone to good use in his designs, though. He did a lot of designs around social issues and making sure his ideas got out there. One of the major things he did was for Benetton magazine and their campaign "The United Colors of Benetton". This project lead to Tibor's own magazine called "Colors". On top of this project he had a studio with his wife, Maria, called M&Co. where he did many things including odd objects like paperweights and watches. He has a very quirky, fun style and you can see that in the work that he does.
David Carson is another designer that I really enjoyed learning about. He did a lot of experimental typography in his designs and had no formal classes. He didn't believe in a grid system and didn't have a theory about his work. He really just let it be what it was and expressive. His most famous saying was, "Legibility should not be mistaken for communication," which meant that just because the viewer could read the message didn't mean that it was compelling. He was the art director for 5 different magazines and was most well known for his work for "Raygun".
Matthew Carter is a typographer and type designer. He learned young how to make the type from his father, who influenced him a lot. He was also influenced by other type designers like Andrea Mantegna and Robert Granjon. Some of his well known type faces are Bell Centenial, which is still used today in the phonebook, and Walker. He also came up with the ink trap in his letters where the ink would have somewhere to bleed and still have a sharp corner. He is known for redesigning the Museum of Modern Art logo so that it would be easily recognisable to even those who couldn't read the letters in it, and he also owned the largest type foundry, Bitstream, Inc.