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Graffiti + Advertising = ?
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Hi i was just wondering if i might get some opinions of you guys?
I'm a student studying design and i've chosen the subject 'Legitimisation of Graffiti in Commercial design'
Broken down it's looking at whether Graffiti is being overused by companies to promote their products or to make themselves look cooler and if it's a legitimate medium to use. What do you think?
In reference i noticed someone's recently defaced a D-Face (you see what i did there :D) piece in London, regarding his recently work for a big clothing brand.
The Scrawl Collective (who are godlike in my eyes and i'm not depreciating their work) have worked for Nike, Microsoft, Adidas etc
And in the past Sony and IBM have all tried to invade street art culture
Is it good for graffiti? Do Legal pieces or commissioned work ruin it for the real artists?
Any views would be great on this, speak you're mind
Posted at 4:44PM, 17 December 2007 PDT
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Artists have to make money somehow, graffiti artists included. That is if they wish to keep doing what they love. Futura 2000 has his own clothing label, which I approve of most (having your own label, because the artist is in control of his art.) You may have noticed other artists doing similar things, Kaws, Haze, and Daim. But all of my examples have also done cross-promotional work with major companies (Nike, New Balance, Pepsi), which can be viewed as 'selling out'.
With this in mind, I think that the use of graffiti is legitimate depending on how it is integrated into design.
What kills me is when it is overused as a form of commercial design. It becomes trendy and has the potential for being viewed as a fad or far worse still, popular culture itself!
Plenty of people, mostly those that are keeping things real, are going to see this as a threat to their personal being. I have been enraged to see graffiti elements being used in a Nickelodeon Ad to showcase a cartoon for kids. This has nothing to do with graffiti. Sadly, popular culture tends to make a commodity out of subcultures and overkill it to extinction, removing it from its uniqueness. When major companies start putting drips and bubbles on TV ads they are trying to be cutting edge, sell you an idea, and more so promote a popular lifestyle.
Let me backtrack, to my best and first example. Futura 2000 started doing "legal murals" for a club in Manhattan in the early 80's, he also did flyers and poster designs for The Clash around the same time. He later became the head artist for Mo' Wax Records in the 90's. These are all examples of a legitimate use of graffiti in commercial design. Graffiti as a design medium has always had its niche but today seems to be overused, abused, and will in turn be played out. This is why you have artists like D-Face getting "defaced."
Where do you draw the line? I admit that I buy tons of New Balance trainers, some of which were designed by a street artist turned designer and I have no griefs or beefs about it. When I see an artist that I respect making something for me to appreciate, I support them. But I don't think that big businesses will see it the same way, they want as much capital as possible and I find that offensive. Graffiti, like all things, is evolving but the real spirit of the art form still lies in defiance of the system.
Posted 7 months ago.
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As lordscience said, artists deserve to make money from their own work, and they have a right to control how their work is used, and by whom. Meanwhile, businesses are going to sell their products and services using whatever forms of advertising work best for them.
The flip side of "selling out" is the fact that graffiti culture has had a huge and irreversible influence on mainstream culture. If graffiti weren't so influential and appealing, it would hold no attraction for advertisers. So in the big picture, when I see graf imagery in ads, I take it as a good sign that mainstream culture is at least looking in the right place for its influences.
That said, I don't necessarily approve of every individual commercial use of graffiti imagery. There are many things advertisers can do wrong, many ethical, moral and legal lines that they should not cross, but sometimes they do. Biting the style of a recognized writer for an ad campaign, without seeking the writer's permission or paying them a consulting fee, that's one lousy thing that happens sometimes. (Maybe they think they can get away with it because graffiti is illegal, but I say two wrongs don't make a right.)
Another example is the Sony ads you mentioned. They were carefully made to look like "real" street art, they were placed in locations where graffiti is traditionally painted, and in fact they were painted over other people's pieces in some of those spots. In their effort to appear "real", they ended up breaking the rules of traditional graf culture (don't go over a piece you can't burn) and pissing off the exact people-- the culturally influential graffiti writers-- that they were trying to reach out to. The fact that they hired other graffiti writers to perform the act of painting the ads might under other circumstances mitigate the sleaziness of the campaign. But in this case it added insult to injury, because these writers weren't hired for their own artistic abilities, they were just hired to copy drawings-- projected on the wall with a slide projector-- that had been designed by some ad agency art director. So that campaign was three different kinds of sleazy: it was a big lie, it broke the rules, and it used writers like they were house painters instead of true artists.
On the other side, there are cases where advertisers commission graffiti writers to do their own thing, and they simply stamp the corporate brand in the corner, as if to say "we paid for this art, so please think of us as cool." When that's done gracefully, I can respect it-- at least they're being honest. That's essentially corporate art patronage, and it's a lot better than no art patronage.
Originally posted 7 months ago.
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otherthings (a group admin) edited this topic 7 months ago.
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I don't know if this is interesting to you, but there is a graffiti artist in my town (Tulsa, OK) who has done several commissioned works for local businesses. If you're intersted in his stuff, search my pictures for "Eratik," and visit his website eratikone.com.
Posted 6 months ago.
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Thats awesome - cheers mate, great link it's interesting to see how the boundaries blur when artists get commissioned by companies - there's those who hate it so much they'll stop at nothing til it's defaced or the artist is discredited and theres those who just see as a great bit of paid mural work - certainly it helps that Eratik is a damn fine artist and he's done a great job at making an advert not look like an average billboard jumping on the graffiti bandwagon.
It'd be interesting to hear what folks think about his work, as i said it's a mixed world out there of people for and against corporate commissions.
Doesn't make his work any less sweet though - nice one, appreciate it!
Posted 6 months ago.
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I'll preface this by saying that the world of advertising is soulless...
That being said, I look at "underground artists" that are selling out to major corporations in the same way I'd look at a Renaissance artist that was painting for the Pope. (And remember, in its day, the church was the original big business.)
You have to find ways to get your art to the masses while balancing your checkbook. So, I wouldn't call them sellouts... as long as they are the one's trying to communicate with through the work and aren't just relaying the message of some corporate monkey.
Posted 4 months ago.
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advertisein is controlin and bullshittin the general public, fashions are dictated by it and destroyed by it.
graffiti is a cultral movement and by usin it to advertise over priced products is a bad thing, back in the day when james dean bust out as an orginal bad boy his fashion and persona were bastardnised and obsorbed into popular fashion to stamp it out, hedgemony is the goverments way of controlin a smaller but dominate underground movement that concerns them, by makin it a high street find. your just buyin into the demise of the art form and allowin men in suits to sublimily dictate it life span.
Posted 4 months ago.
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Graffiti is freedom from consumerist idiots. Like Nike, McDonalds, etc...
So a major company like them cannot be cool be splashing some real art. They are not revolutionary. They are fake.
So .. thats what I think. Advertising with graff is like whoring an artistic revolution.
Posted 3 months ago.
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graffertising:)
Posted 3 months ago.
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Would this qualify?
Posted 3 months ago.
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I recently did a billboard to raise awareness of cleaning up the washes in Tucson. And made it look like grafitti....
Posted 3 weeks ago.
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That's a nice billboard, philipcyr, but it doesn't really look much like graffiti!
Posted 3 weeks ago.
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Trust me, otherthings, we took a lot of crap from city officials thinking that we tagged that bridge.
Posted 3 weeks ago.
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i would say that when graffiti is used for advertising it isnt graffiti, its just artistic design.
Posted 3 weeks ago.
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what's the right font for my graffiti advertisements?
Posted 3 weeks ago.
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yea
Posted 2 days ago.
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google 'daim'
Posted 2 days ago.
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