Writing Graffiti Style

You see it everywhere these days, from the fronts of T-shirts to the underside of bridges. You can buy coffee table books on the subject and even download fonts for your computer that attempt to emulate it. Graffiti art is everywhere, and there are as many different styles as there are individuals who use a can of spray paint and the side of a building as their medium. But there are some basic tag styles that can be emulated if you are trying to learn how to write graffiti style.

The most basic style of graffiti writing is also the simplest and most unornamented. The letters are usually shaped much like you would write them with a pen in a Roman type font where the letters don’t touch each other. This kind of work is commonly seen in long written works or as a signature on a larger piece of graffiti. It is the perfect place to start when learning graffiti writing, though, because anyone can do it.

The next step up in difficulty would be “throw-up” style, which incorporates the outlines of letters into the design. free-graffiti-creator.blogspot.com

Graffiti Law Tagged Out

A LAWSUIT spurred by the fashion and video game designer Mark Ecko has at least temporarily won back for young New Yorkers (ages 18 to 21) the right to purchase spray paint and broad-tipped markers.

Some stern adults in the city are certain that the only reason any youngster would want to possess such art supplies is to add to New York's graffiti. The law, spearheaded by City Councilman Peter Vallone Jr., went into effect in January and was suspended in early May by a judge pending the outcome of Ecko's lawsuit. The ban still applies to New Yorkers under 18.
: free-graffiti-creator.blogspot.com

Talk Story -- Stories about Hilo & The Big Island of Hawaii

A
“tag” is the most basic form of graffiti. Tags can contain subtle or
cryptic messages and contain the writers name or initials.

Most cities across the country consider graffiti to be a form of
vandalism. The costs for clean up can be high for business and city
municipalities, Hilo is no different.

autovandal.com/

Hilo
is now experiencing a rash of graffiti activity inconveniencing many
downtown merchants and residents near the beach parks. Throughout this
article you will see recent examples of graffiti from Hilo.

As the cost to clean and repaint areas hit by graffiti grow, many
citizens have gotten together in an attempt to problem solve and
minimize graffiti and its effects. The East Hawaii Cultural Center has
developed a program similar to those in other larger cities. They
provide a canvas “blank wall” for the artist. They encourage the
graffiti artist to use a mural style of art incorporating a theme tied
into events happening in Hilo.

Another idea being circulated by the Hilo Downtown Improvement
Association (DIA) is to provide a reward to those who help identify
those responsible for graffiti in areas where it is not appropriate and
costing business owners and citizen’s time and expense for its clean up.

The
Hawaii Police Department has also implemented a graffiti database to
build and enhance evidence for the prosecution of graffiti artist
suspects by linking tags to incidents of graffiti. I encourage those
who have additional ideas on how to handle the issue of graffiti in
Hilo to leave your ideas in the comment section at the end of this
article. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

autovandal.com/

I want to take this opportunity to recognize a special group of
individuals who have taken on the challenge of helping our community to
clean up graffiti. Goodwill Industries, the “Aina Keepers” are a group
of volunteers who, at no cost to the community, clean and paint over
graffiti. They have been a tremendous resource to both the police
department and community. I would also like to thank all those who have
donated paint, materials and time in helping to clean up graffiti.

Daze

Posted by Kolin at 19:15

nwgraphics.blogspot.com

Tag Graffiti Alphabet - number of words and phrases have come to describe different styles and aspects of graffiti. Like all slang and colloquialisms, the phrases vary in different cities and countries. The following terminology comes primarily from the United States

tag-graffiti-alphabet.blogspot.com

Graffiti

ilovetypography.com/.../

A tag is the most basic form of graffiti, a graffiti writer’s personal signature or logo, drawn in one color. The tag might include a character, which refers not to a letterform, but to an iconic cartoon figure. Tagging is the act of writing the tag with a marker or spray paint. A slightly larger and more ambitious version of the tag is known as a throwie or a throw-up. A typical throwie has a background color and an outline in a second color. The interior color of the letters on a throw-up is known as the fill or fill-in. When the second color is only roughly sketched or lined in, the throwie is known as a scrub. The most ambitious graffiti of all is work that is done on a large scale in at least three colors, often incorporating fades or blended colors. This is known as a piece, short for, of course, a masterpiece.

The plastic cap or tip on a spray paint can determines the line weight. The standard caps that come with spray paint are known as sucker tips, and are often replaced with others, such as skinny tips, thin tips, thick tips, fat tips, or flare tips. The largest fat caps are sometimes known as softballs because of the soft round marks they make. Line width is sometimes described in fingers. A four-finger line is, for instance, about as a wide as a hand. Bubble letters, quite out of fashion now, were an early style of graffiti lettering with a rounded shape, and roller letters are large-scale tags drawn with paint rollers. To bomb an area is to profusely cover it with tags or throw-ups. To kill an area is to bomb it beyond a point of diminishing returns.

The culture of the internet communication and text messaging is changing the alphabet in other other interesting ways. According to the editors at Merriam-Webser, 2007’s Word of the Year was w00t, written with zeros rather than proper Os. The word w00t evolved from two currents: hip-hop slang for delight at seeing a woman’s posterior, and from a computer programmer slang called leet, l33t or l33t sp34k, in which letters are exchanged for numbers and other typographic forms that suggest their shape, and are often playfully juxtaposed to create a gestalt that is visually ambiguous or incomprehensible to outsiders, but perfectly legible to the elite who create and understand it. “Ph342 /\/\j 133+ 5|<1||%,”>

As we move into an Internet-intensive future, the word-on-paper will survive, but as the dominant text medium it will fade, as did papyrus, stone and clay before it. The written word will most commonly be consumed from a computer screen (just as it is a computer screen that I am looking at as I write this). But the written word, text, will survive. Written or “printed” words, must have a visual form (with the exception of Braille, perhaps). It is the visual form of words that is of interest to typographers and type designers, not ink or paper. As the medium of “print” continues to shift to the “digital environment,” and as readers begin to take advantage of preferences and the personal options inherent in digital text, the invention and even the enthusiastic acceptance of more typographic variation seems inevitable.