Grunge was a particular style that emerged in Seattle in the late 80s and 90s. It initiated as a form of underground music and when it became popular, graphic design was implemented as a commercial way to popularise these bands. Designers therefore tended to explore the less ideal and more realistic design solutions that would reflect the world we’re living in more accurately and precisely. This was often done by using elements such as scratchy typefaces, dirty stains, torn images, creased pieces of paper, jarring aesthetic pieces, hand-drawn elements and dirty textures.

David Carson is the perfect example that represents the Grunge movement. He developed his own unique style through experimentation. Carson approached editorial design differently, throwing design conventions such as grids and consistent layouts of type out the door. Through his work for magazines, he developed his grunge typography, often manipulating letterforms to the extent that they were unrecognisable. Since he had not been formally trained in design, he knew nothing of grids and design conventions, so he did what felt right to him (Butler, 2014). It was his work for Ray Gun that made him well known.

The main thing I enjoy about Carson’s design is that his style challenged the traditional editorial and advertising design. His principles were disregarded in favour of expressive design, and described his approach as “loose, intuitive, no-formal-training kind of approach” (Poynor, 2013).
 certain characteristics notable in the work of Carson is the fact that he manipulates and blurs text and image to amplify the content and its meaning. He uses asymmetrical layouts, where pages are densely layered with images and fragmented typefaces of contrasting weights sizes and forms.

Carson challenged how we perceive visual communication; is clarity and legibility really how we should design. In a way, he places more importance on the page's look and expression, rather than what the text says, which makes the viewer really take time to decipher and appreciate the design. Too often have we flipped through a magazine, barely looking at the page because we keep seeing the same structure repeated over and over again Seeing what seems like chaos on a page would really catch the eye. This signaled the beginning of the Grunge movement, which took the world by storm.

Carson is considered one of the most influential designers of the 1990s, and was selected by Apple as one of the 30 most innovative Apple computer users (Pedersen, 2014).