Graffiti and the Internet Repurposed

I was at the bar last night talking with some friends about graffiti art. I had to confess to them that I didn't know much about it, I didn't know any artist really aside from the really famous ones (i.e. Banksy and Sheppard Fairey) and the rest is from what I've seen on the streets and in books. But I did remember Blu (the artist above), who I really admire. My opinion on graffiti is that the medium has become diluted with crap. I think that the idea of quick tagging or illegibly writing your nickname in one color is truly vandalism. There is no artistic value in it and does nothing but kill the work of real artists. Then there is the style of graffiti that is performed over and over and over again. Whether is words with sharp angles that overlap one another or bubbly words with a gradient fill we've seen it done by countless amounts of people. This work by Blu pushes the boundaries of the medium and transforms graffiti into something new. He sketches and doodles and buildings become his paper.

The internet has fallen into the same scenario as graffiti. We see wonderful usages of the technology medium buried among terrible websites with bad typography and cheesy stock images. Then clean corporate websites are a dime a dozen with the invention of pre-made web templates. But there are a few designers and artists that take the medium and see it in a different light. Or artists that take technology and express strong messages in clear way like Banksy does with graffiti.

Doodles

I know it's been a while since I've posted. I've been busy working on a logo and to be honest logos have never been one of my strong suits. Sure I can crank out a mediocre logo under pressure that ranks a hair above average. But to make a symbol that embodies the full breath of a company where every last detail is caressed over. Well let’s just say it was a long and challenging process (over two months). I invested hours upon hours over the course of several days with minimum sleep. In the end I really feel as though I made a break through. Now I have a real love and passion for working on and working with identities. My secret was to just tackle how I work and develop my process.

It was simple, really. One little piece of advice instructors have tried to engrave in my mind since I was a teenager: Carry a sketchbook. Seems simple enough, you say. But after spending years and years dragging a sketchbook around everywhere (so I would have the minimum number of entries by the end of the quarter to receive a passing grade) the last thing I wanted to do after graduating college was to keep a sketchbook on me. I wanted to finally be rid of art school once and for all! Those endless pages would no longer haunt me. No more long nights of sketching. No more would I have its icy glare back at me as I go to take a pen or book out of my knapsack.

It went well for a few years, or so I thought, till one day a visitor to my desk noticed a tiny sketch in the corner of a piece of paper on my desk. It was nothing really, I hadn't even remembered drawing it. I must have just let it flow through my hand without thinking, while I was waiting for my ancient underpowered computer to fail exporting a PDF from inDesign for the fourth time and listening on the phone to a 20 minute apology from one of the team members I’m helping to complete the proposal (it happens). I began looking at all the other papers I had lying around my desk, my notebooks, envelopes, post-its, everything that had a surface to draw on I must have made at least one small doodle. How long had this gone on? All along I had been keeping a sketchbook but since I had disregarded my teachers’ advice, my ideas were scattered all over.

So again, I am carrying a sketchbook to catch ideas as they randomly appear; it’s helped me tremendously, especially with my most recent projects. But you might be wondering what became of the scatter of doodles that had crept onto various work materials on my desk. Well, a colleague of mine made a great suggestion to begin scanning them in and even developing my free flowing doodles to the next step. What you see incorporated into this blog post are some of the main sketches from my doodles on papers around my desk and the illustrations I’ve begun to develop since scanning them in. You’ll also see some of the sketches from the logo I’ve been busy designing.