David Carson's Use of Typography and Negative Space

As my original concept has developed, I've decided to use our water project as a study in the use of negative space because of the vastness of the oceans at the macro level and the delicate detail of the ocean's smallest fish and plankton at the micro level. I am admittedly inexperienced in typography, so with this as my starting point, I began looking at ways of using both negative space and typography in graphic design.

While researching typographic ideas for my water pollution/dilution animation I came across the work of David Carson. Carson is the founder of Raygun magazine and gained recognition in the late 80's and early 90's grunge wave. Much of Carson's work is for major label rock groups and corporate clients including Quiksilver, Suicide Girls, Samsung, Adidas, Nine Inch Nails, Pepsi, and Toyota. His homepage is here and contains a wide variety of examples from his career. A condensed look at 60 of his works can be found here.

Carson is largely known for his bold ways of breaking the rules of design in ways that create interest in the viewer and communicate essential messages. Two key elements to draw from Carson's work are his dramatic use of negative space in his design layout and the way that he not only mixes font sizes but also font styles in the same work. Photographs are often blurred or enlarged and cropped. When applied to animation, these effects have even more possibilities. Texts could go from illegible to legible and negative space can be used in flux to focus viewers to different areas of the animation. Blur effects could similarly be used to gradually bring important details into focus and reveal the message of an animated PSA.

A few questions when thinking about typography and negative space: What does a designer communicate by mixing serif fonts with sans serif fonts? When does condensing your text go from intriguing to cluttered? Can an organization without the label recognition and branding of a corporation like Pepsi, (ie a startup not-for-profit) get away with giving up two-thirds of their design real estate to negative space while giving their logo nearly as much positive space as an extensive text in a relatively tiny font?