{"id":38864,"date":"2016-09-14T05:00:15","date_gmt":"2016-09-14T12:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/creativemarket.com\/blog\/?p=38864"},"modified":"2024-04-12T02:51:40","modified_gmt":"2024-04-12T09:51:40","slug":"graffiti-fonts-guide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/creativemarket.com\/blog\/graffiti-fonts-guide","title":{"rendered":"Graffiti Fonts: The Ultimate Guide"},"content":{"rendered":"

Graffiti fonts are taking over the world of typography because of their unique and urban vibe. With their usually vivid and embellished colors and outlines, they’re perfect for catching the attention of viewers, readers, and spectators. Because of these design traits, graffiti fonts have also become more legitimate with their use in advertising campaigns. Part and parcel of these fonts is their ability to invoke emotion by relying on evocative—and some would say provocative—images and shapes.\nIn the last couple of decades, graffiti in general has gained more recognition as an art form instead of an urban menace, which has helped give rise to the abundance of graffiti font resources on the web. Of course, these fonts are just outrageously creative and really cool to look at, too, which have helped their popularity!\nLet’s dig deeper into all the interesting areas of this creative form of expression.\n

<\/span>The History of Graffiti Fonts<\/span><\/h2>

\nThe history of graffiti fonts lies in the origins of graffiti itself, so it’s important that we examine the roots of graffiti before anything else.\nGraffiti is actually an ancient invention, dating back tens of thousands of years, when we go by a study published in the journal Nature<\/a>:\n“Artwork in an Indonesian cave has been found to date back at least 40,000 years, making it the oldest sign yet of human creative art — likely pre-dating art from European caves.â€\nSince graffiti is, according to Merriam-Webster<\/a>, “any pictures or words painted or drawn on a wall, building, etc.†these earliest cave paintings from Indonesia definitely qualify as very ancient graffiti.\nNow, let’s fast-forward to modern graffiti.\n

<\/figure>\n \nIn a PBS article<\/a>, modern graffiti’s origin is traced back to high-school kids in urban areas in the 1960s. According to the book “The History of American Graffiti,â€<\/a> high-school student “Cornbread†is credited with being the earliest modern graffiti artist, when he began tagging (an official term to denote the specific hand style of the graffiti artist) city walls all over Philadelphia in 1967.\nBet you can’t guess the reason, though! It was to impress a girl—a favorite pastime of high-school boys all around the globe.\nFrom there, modern graffiti took another two decades before it was being showcased in some art galleries in the U.S. as actual artwork instead of just paintings and illustrations being spray-painted onto walls and buildings.\nWith the Internet becoming more accessible and available to average people in the 1990s, graffiti took a turn from the streets to the web, with both images of graffiti on the streets and graffiti art products becoming more widespread as artists exchanged ideas and contact info online. According to <\/span>GraffitiKnowhow.com<\/a>, the year 2000 saw the biggest development and evolution of style and technique since modern graffiti first burst onto the urban scene decades earlier, all thanks to the connectivity of the web.<\/span>\nThe Internet provided the perfect evolution of this art form, with graffiti typefaces and fonts popping up on more sites as creatives started to realize how this unique style made for great design in everything from flyers, product packaging and pamphlets to magazines, t-shirts and books.\n<\/p>

<\/span>Why Graffiti Fonts Are So Popular<\/span><\/h2>

\nCurrently, there’s a great demand for graffiti fonts<\/a>. On Creative Market, we sell hundreds of graffiti-inspired products<\/a> from various independent creators. Clearly, this confirms their popularity, but what’s driving it?\nFirst of all, in spite of its illegal origins—at least in the modern sense—graffiti has been mainstreamed in the media and pop culture as art. Helping this turnaround of its image are businesses like TATS CRU<\/a>, which is a professional graffiti team that will actually create spectacular murals for your wall—at a price and legally. Graffiti artists like Scape Martinez have actually published books like “GRAFF: The Art & Technique of Graffitiâ€<\/a>, further moving this activity out from the underground.\n

<\/figure>\n \nBecause of this mainstreaming, it’s more socially acceptable to create and sell graffiti fonts, but other factors contribute to their popularity, too.\nThese fonts are incredibly creative works of art that communicate vibrancy, evocativeness and great deals of personality and character. They’re easy on the eyes and nice to look at while it’s also interesting to try to read into the psychology behind their creation.\nThere’s also the sheer utility of these typefaces. How designers and creatives can apply them to a virtually limitless number of projects is almost mind-blowing. Graffiti fonts can be used for:\n<\/p>