Artistic Futures Revisited: David Pearson
As part of our 40th birthday celebrations, CR revisits the alumni from our almost 30-year Creative Futures program. Here we talk to designer David Pearson, an alumnus that was introduced at Creative Futures in 2005
Given that books have been dismissed as an extinct race by David Pearson for most of his working life, there is some irony in the fact that he was able to forge such a successful career to bring them to life .
After graduating from Central Saint Martins in London in 2002 – just as the internet was exploding and digital design was piquing people's interests – Pearson's first job was as a fresh-faced graduate as a text designer at Penguin Books. His career was almost over before it started when the entire text design department was fired after six months. Fortunately, Penguin Press Art Director Jim Stoddart had already seen something in the young designer and found another job in the cover design department.
"I was a junior there for a couple of years, and the good thing about being a junior in a very busy company like Penguin is that you can get pretty experimental projects that nobody looks too closely," says Pearson. “The hierarchy within publishing is really flat. An art director will usually give you a project, which you will then lead as a sub-art director, I assume, so early on I was given a lot of responsibility. "