Graffiti and Urban Typography

Graffiti and urban typography often coincide and overlap, so I wanted to look at both together. All of the photos in this post are by Hrag Vartanian. Hrag is an art critic and writer in Brooklyn, and he's made his extensive Flikrstreams (4000+ images) available for use free of charge under a Creative Commons 2.0 license.

This first image is straightforward graffiti. I love the symmetry of the mirror image 5 and 2.

I'm fairly sure this is type, but it's so stylized it's hard to decipher. This reminds me of the kinds of stylized type my friends and I would develop in middle school for note-writing. Type designed to be undecipherable to the uninitiated. That is, adults.

Here, graffiti and urban typography come together. The stenciled “built for collapse” on the right could be a political statement or simple FYI statement. I like the ambiguity.

This one's definitely a political statement. Urban typography as street art.

Spray paint is generally the medium of graffiti. Here it appears to have been used with a stencil to create the crisp letterforms and gun graphic. Street art? Graffiti? Both? Definitely urban typography.

I'm including this last image, because I respond to it as type; I keep trying to read it. The form in the center left could be an L. The center right seems to say “eve.” Again, I find the ambiguity appealing.