Beach Culture^141
David CarsonGood magazine design is not simply
a process of imposing tried and true
formulas, but one of creating formats
that complement an editorial
viewpoint. Yet much magazine
design is tried and true because
publishers want to be safe.
Advertisers prefer it that way.
On rare occasions magazine
designers rise above the design
clichés imposed by marketing
experts, and when an intrepid
designer does take the plunge notice
must be taken. Every so often a
magazine captures the Zeitgeist. In
the mid- 1970 s Wet: The Magazine of
Gourmet Bathing, with its premiere
cover showing two photographs,
taken ten years apart, of a mother
and her daughters sitting naked in a bathtub, marked a shift from
“underground press” politics to cult fetishism. In the early 1980 s Emigre,
with its alternative cross-cultural coverage and raucous type design,
suggested a new wave was about to crest. In 1990 Beach Culture, a journal of
West Coast watersports, became the cult magazine of the moment when it
surfaced in design competitions and annuals nationwide. Its primary
audience was surfers, but it became the benchmark of 1990 s design. Its sole
designer, David Carson (b. 1956 ), transformed the magazine into a showcase
for radical typography and design tomfoolery.
Beach Culturewas full of design indulgences and technological
trickery, but it also included striking photography and illustration by
talented artists, such as Geof Kern, Marshall Arisman, Milton Glaser, Matt
Mahurin, and Henrik Drescher. As a chaotic pastiche of typographic excess
it was often unreadable, but conventional readability was not necessarily a
virtue given its context.Beach Culturecatered to an audience that was able
to navigate the visuals and text. No one ever said a surfing magazine should
look mainstream. But neither was there a demand that it be cutting edge.