Collision. Everyday Graphic Design

In this brief Collision, we explore a tension between the contemporary graphic designer David Carson and the 1960s artist Jacques Villeglé, an artist Carson has never heard of. We claim that Villeglé’s work celebrates the irregularities of what could be considered mundane ad hoc street performances. In contrast, Carson more or less detaches his work from that seamy reality of the banal by reducing the inherent complexity of the everyday into ideal assemblages of image-and-text. By highlighting this awkward difference between an ideal designerly intention and a grubbier everyday reality, we stimulate appetites for more realist-inspired discourses of graphic design.