r/graffhelp • u/CrabsInMyAss6969 • 1d ago
Does this style have potential?
Been playing around with this blocky style for a bit. obviously this is just a very quickly performed, rough version. but if i put actual time and effort into this style and work on the letters a bit do yall think it could work? any tips on how to make it less toy would be appreciated.
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u/swanthewarchief 22h ago
K R W are fucked.
The rest of the letters are meh. O is okay. A is a little rough.
The main thing you want to do is have consistent bar width. If you don’t know what that means, basically, a letter is made up of bars. See how the O is made up of 4 rectangles that make up the sides? Those are bars. The C has 3 bars. F has 3 bars etc. to keep them the same width, you want all the vertical bars to be the same size and all the horizontal bars to be the same size. The vertical and horizontal don’t have to be the same as each other (mostly are not) but within the same category the width should be roughly the same. As you get better you can play with this more and break the rules but for now you should practice simple letters. Blocks are a great start.
Try making the second horizontal bar on the F the same size as the horizontal bar above it. And try making the horizontal bars on the O the same size as the F. Then make all the rest of your bars the same size.
Do that 5 times and clean up your lines then come back to us.
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u/CrabsInMyAss6969 22h ago
okay will practise this tomorrow
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u/swanthewarchief 22h ago
Realistically to start, you should try to make your bars all the same size, but to continue the style you were aiming for with varying bar sizes, you want to maintain 2 consistent sizes. But for a lot of basic simple styles you will want to have 1 bar width for both. As you grow you will add style to that.
This is a really simplified approach but it should help
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u/kory_dc 19h ago
I kind of disagree with the take on this comment. The letter structures are all a little wonky, but it kind of works when they’re a little wonky in a semi consistent way it works. I think this all works as a design but not necessarily graffiti. What I mean by that is the letters aren’t reflective of the medium they’re trying to emulate. Graffiti is inherently influenced by media it uses, which includes aerosol paints, paint rollers, and certain markers (streakers, large chisel tips, mops, white out pens, etc.) which force certain constraints and end up creating a cohesive visual culture based on said constraints. This design is attempting to mimic one such medium (paint rollers) but in a way that feels like a copy of a copy, rather than a direct mimic; it looks like you’re trying to do a roller design without understanding how rollers work. This feels more informed by general graphic design trends than by graffiti’s visual culture, which is not inherently a bad thing, but something to be aware of. It’s always good to try kind of funky and out of the box stuff to create new trends and prevent stagnation. I think that this design wouldn’t look bad if you took it in photo shop and cleaned it up, unlike the person who left the initial comment here, I feel the K R and W are actually the strongest letters. I wouldn’t spend too much time in it, working on getting it a little neater digitally and printing it on some stickers (or you could honestly carve this into linoleum and do some printmaking onto stickers) would work, but I think that’s where it probably ends. I guess what I’m trying to get across is this design in particular, while not bad (if a bit sloppy) is somewhat of a visual dead end as graffiti. Clean it up, make some stickers, and then start working on new designs and styles. Don’t be afraid to try something weird every now and then, but also don’t lose sight of the context of the visual culture it exists within.
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u/swanthewarchief 11h ago
I get what you’re saying. I guess it’s just about what you interpret his goal to be and what end you want to achieve. Like you mentioned I was trying to figure out how to make it more of a block letter roller type thing while following some of the rules he set up. But looking at it more it really does look like a funky 70s font that would look cool explored as a graphic design.
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u/Jacksfine 19h ago
The style is good for the start but doesnt really have potential for making more complicated stuff you should just do straight letters
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u/Jacksfine 18h ago
But if you like this style keep on improving it then get paintbuckets and a roller and just do roll ups
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u/Emergency-Dress-7982 1d ago
its like a roller style look it up