David Carson

When I first started my graphic design career, and 'Beach Culture' magazine, I pretty much ran from the surfer label. It was hard to get people to take you seriously.

My site is a little unorthodox without being totally inaccessible.

Just because something's legible doesn't means it communicates. More importantly, it doesn't mean it communicates the right thing. So, what is the message sent before somebody actually gets into the material? And I think that's sometimes an overlooked area.

As we get more technically driven, the importance of people becomes more than it's ever been before. You have to utilize who you are in your work. Nobody else can do that: nobody else can pull from your background, from your parents, your upbringing, your whole life experience.

If I'm doing a logo, I'll do it in black and white. Once the form is feeling right, only then do I start exploring the color palettes. A good example was the process of rebranding the Salvador Dali Museum. I did at least 100 versions in black and white.

I think we've seen a lot of examples of giving a name its own definition in the dot-com world. Amazon, Google, Yahoo - these are names we never would have dreamed major corporations would choose.

There's many ways you communicate. With colour, texture, sound... Even words can communicate.

Some people hate lime-green; red has all this emotional baggage. Blue seems to be overall one of the more positive colors, and a little more serious than yellow.

Good things are associated with blue, like clear days, more than singing the blues. Just the word 'blue' in the singular is full of optimism and positive connotation to most people.

I'm a big believer in the emotion of design, and the message that's sent before somebody begins to read, before they get the rest of the information; what is the emotional response they get to the product, to the story, to the painting - whatever it is.

For some reason I have a visual intuition that allows me to design things in an interesting way, and I don't know where that came from. Because I don't have this formal training, I seem to drift in a different direction.

I was teaching, which I didn't love or hate; it was just OK. I was OK with it, and the hours were good for surfing or whatever. All not good reasons to go into teaching.