David Carson Case Study Postcard
- Client
Personal Project - Date
Winter 2004
In 2004 I was introducing myself to the world of letterpress. While the process of hand setting type taught me more about type and its usages, the true appeal of letterpress to myself was in the way that the ink hit that paper. The imperfections that arose from print to print across and entire run and the way that overprinted inks reacted with each other opened up so many possibilities for exploitation of the process.
Around the time of this discovery I had my nose deep in the history of David Carson. I was enamored by the aura that surrounded even the simple mention of the designer’s name and was drawn to his own experimentation and exploitation of the processes used in the creation of his work.
This project was a combination of those two parts of my life. The front, which featured black ink printed on the black side of a two sided, textured French paper, featured an excerpt of an interview with David where he talked about his infamous usage of Zapf Dingbats for the Bryan Ferry interview he laid out. I combined the type with an image of David himself. This side of the postcard took on two different looks depending on how the light hit it. In the absence of light you could make out the positive image while reflected light turned the card into a negative.
The back side adapted a quote from a study out of Cornell University about the legibility of the words we read. While printing David’s name on the cards, I had the press going a bit too quickly and a few times I’d make an impression before I could get the next card in. The result was a mirror psuedo-impression on the backside of the card as it picked up the ink off the printing surface. A happy accident that I thought added to the project wonderfully.