graffiti & ads

when graffiti artists tagged buses and subway cars, their designs gradually got larger and larger, until they had their “edges” cut off by the shapes of the buses and cars themselves: the designs were intentionally made larger than the media, giving the effect of expansiveness, ambition, confidence---living large and tagging large.

Denunciations of these designs were sharp from the very beginning, but became especially violent when the designs became so huge. security in bus yards and subway car yards sharply increased, making it more and more difficult to do large and complex work (which could take up to an hour of spraying). There were also smaller tags, for small spaces---doorframes, edges, rails. These were made intentionally compact and dense, with an illegibible spikiness as if bristling in defense of their space and their claim on the wandering eye of the passerby.

brand names that are easily recognizable by letters and colors---Marlboro red, DKNY black, etc.---use it, making their messages seem to burst their containers with size and importancce and power, almost flaunting the fact that we can recognize...

(One Marlboro ad had room for only the M and the A and part of the R, plus a familiar graphic of cowboy lighting a cig with a stick from his fire on the prairie....)