The influence of graffiti in visual design
The graffiti artist and visual designer are more alike than you think
As a kid, I was always fascinated by those big, bold letters that ran along the railway on my way to school. When I started to practice graphic design, I immediately realised that the graffiti artist and the visual designer have a lot in common and can actually inspire one another.
Write your name
Growing up in the countryside, I frequently used to take the train to school, or to meet friends, and I spent each journey staring through the window, watching the graffiti along the railway whizz past. I was spellbound — how did it get there? I studied each of these paintings, trying to remember the different names, trying to understand the different styles, and on my way back home, I drew letters on paper.
Inspired by my train journeys, I was tempted to give it a try. It seems to me that graffiti is a sort of progression from childhood. Kids are introduced to marker pens at school and might mark their name or initials on tables, maybe in the corridors, then some go on to make their mark in the street of their school, then in the neighbourhood, then the city, then in other cities. And the activity could be summed up as a single goal: to repeatedly write a name in public spaces as much as possible.
“Visual designers and graffiti artists are image makers — both bear responsibility for the messages they share through their images.”
When I started to learn graphic design, I realised that the graffiti artist — like the visual designer — bears responsibility for the message they spread through their images and letters. While graffiti is a powerful, captivating art form, it often communicates only for the small number of people who can decode the message or the names — it’s less accessible than visual design, where your responsibility is to communicate a message in the (digital) space clearly and effectively to as many people as possible. Perhaps my graffiti should actually take the same attitude as my visual design work: if you’re positioning a message in a public space where it might be seen by hundreds or thousands of people, wouldn’t it be beneficial to make it understandable?
Breaking the rules
As a visual designer, you feel at home creating images and visuals, but it can seem difficult to write copy if you’re not also a writer or a poet. But in an era where we communicate everyday by sending texts via WhatsApp, Snapchat etc, everyone actually writes every day. We’re all constantly producing written content, so why not use this content to create a message everyone will understand?
I started to collect words, sentences, and expressions that sounded good to my ear, that were meaningful for me and that everybody could choose to re-appropriate — and I started to draw these messages. I began to extract content from text messages, voicemails or conversations, and created hand-drawn typographic compositions as a visual message.
“Hand-drawn compositions are a good way to find balance with a daily job as a visual designer where everything has to be pixel-perfect.”
This side project allowed me to find a balance with the work I do as a visual designer, where everything must be pixel-perfect, aligned and respecting the grid. I found that elements we’d consider “errors” in my day job were actually adding a lot of charm to a project. Sometimes you need to step out of the constraints to provoke creativity.
If graffiti is mainly about breaking rules, visual design seems to be about creating them. You create guidelines, design systems and search for consistency. Inspired by the way visual designers create library of assets — I decided to create a proper library of words for my side project, and classified these words as nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.
“Love to disobey rules but love to create some.”
As a result of this library, I created a tangible thing: an A5 book as a sort of prototype that would allow me to test the messages, do research on how these words would be received by an eclectic audience. Feedback was really positive and convinced me that even if visual designers or graffiti artists don’t see themselves as writers, we are story-tellers, and the step from story-teller to author is reachable.
Human centred graffiti
With experience in both graphic design and graffiti, I decided to go back in the public space and offer a message to a broader audience. Instead of drawing on a piece of paper, I contacted shop owners in North West London where I live, and offered to paint their shutters or walls.
“People are an unlimited source of inspiration.”
While offering these messages to a broader audience, I try to inject different layers of reading. Some of my work contains personal messages, because your interactions with people or the feelings you can have for someone can influence the way you design. And If you take time to observe, listen, ask people questions, they will become the best source of inspiration. That’s probably why working in a human-centred design agency is — to me — the best place to work.
If you enjoyed this article, you can find out more about my work on my instagram.
