[no. 006] Street Logos

Over the Winter Break I bought a book called Street Logos by Tristan Manco. It is about how traditional graffiti like tagging, has been transformed into an art form with a free-for-all kind of attitude. “Spontaneous doodles have run riot as sketchbooks are swapped for street corners.”

One category of street art is signs. Originally, graffiti artists were making statements by painting over the signs of the city, in an effort to reclaim the city space that has been conquered by consumerist advertising. However, in more recent years, graffiti artists have been using the aesthetics of signage to create their own marks, as such aesthetics “represent order, authority, consumer culture and the way our lives are regulated.”

Iconographics is another category of street art. Manco makes the argument that “people have become immune to tagging, so when an artist starts using an image instead we suddenly take notice. This is very true, we are so accustomed to seeing some name or word tagged on a wall, that it hardly turns our head, but when we see an image of something drawn onto a wall, it grabs our attention, even if just for a second.

There are a few artists’ works which I thought were of particular interest such as Pixel Phil whose style is to mimic the pixilated figures we might see on a computer screen. He uses these figures to make jokes, juxtaposing these digital figures with reality. He considers the location before he creates his characters. I think that we often get caught up in the drama of life, and sometimes don’t have the time or effort to see the brighter side of it. But Pixel Phil creates these visual parodies that are carefully thought out to deliver a humorous message without too much thinking involved. Another iconographic artist that I found to be interesting was Plug. He paints the European standard two-pin plug onto “machines or objects on the street so that they can look unplugged, symbolizing the shutting down of the system.”







All these artists are making statements, whether they be personal or political. Graffiti is a channel that they are using because it is very public and there are so many statements that can be made about our society on the very streets that we see on an everyday basis. Further, these artists are not just taking images from their imagination or otherwise, and plopping them anywhere they please, they have taken consideration into the form of their images and how they can be integrated into their environment, creating some narrative or commentary about existing conditions.