The more I practiced, the more I loved doing this type of artwork. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do! Iveson, K. (2013). Cities within the city: Do-it-yourself urbanism and the rights to the city. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 37(3), 941–956. If you’re not entirely impressed with graffiti art, I challenge you to open your mind and give it a try. You may be surprised.

SWOON (née Caledonia Curry) is a female street artist who was born in New London, Connecticut, raised in Daytona Beach, Florida, and now resides in New York City. She began creating Street Art in 1999, spending several days in her studio preparing wheat paste posters made of recycled newspaper, and then transporting the finished works to urban public spaces where she pasted them onto walls. She, like many other street artists, favors this method as it allows her to execute detailed works while spending minimal time at the intended location. She has explained that Street Art was important to her as it allowed her to have an impact on the urban landscape, rather than disappearing into obscurity by creating commercial art that would remain hidden inside a gallery or private collection.

Walking as a researcher’s embodied experience

It’s also popular for shapes to be integrated into fonts themselves. Do this by getting creative with edges and lines. Scale up. McAuliffe, C., & Iveson, K. (2011). Art and crime (and other things besides …): Conceptualising graffiti in the city. Geography Compass, 3(5), 128–143. Graffiti is all about messaging and conveying a certain idea or concept through art. Think about the message that you want to put across and make this the focal point of everything that comes afterwards. The creation process of a graffiti piece usually starts with a tag/handstyle. The letters are constructed around the tag. Coloring is where your piece will truly come to life. Consider using gradients and complementary colors to create a visually striking effect. Explore different color theories and combinations to understand what resonates with your style.

Halsey, M., & Young, A. (2002). The meaning of graffiti and municipal administration. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 35(2), 165–186. Doing so will help you to learn every step of the way and give you an idea of how to design a graffiti on your own. Malone, K. (2006). United Nations: A key player in a global movement for child friendly cities. In B. Gleeson & N. Spike (Eds.), Creating child friendly cities: Reinstating kids in the city. Abingdon: Routledge. MacDiarmid, L., & Downing, S. (1998). A rough aging out: Graffiti writers and subcultural drift. International Journal of Criminal Justice Sciences, 7(2), 605–617. If you’re wondering what’s the difference between graffiti and street art – graffiti is normally word based, while street art is more centred upon images. Graffiti art is recognised as an amalgamation of the two.

Embodied methodology: Setting up the research, expanding the analysis

MacDonald, N. (2001). The graffiti subculture: Youth, masculinity and identity in London and New York. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Austin, J. (2001). Taking the train: How graffiti art became an urban crisis in New York City. New York: Columbia University Press. Schacter, R. (2008). An ethnography of iconoclash: An investigation into the production, consumption and destruction of street-art in London. Journal of Material Culture, 13(1), 35–61. Zukin, S., & Braslow, L. (2011). The life cycle of New York’s creative districts: Reflections on unanticipated consequences of unplanned cultural zones. City, Culture and Society, 2, 131–140.