Illegal Typography

Illegal Typography

Enter TAKI 183, a kid that lives on 183rd street in the Washington Heights area of Manhattan. The number means just that, TAKI lives on 183rd street, therefore he chose his number street as a sign of location, as a base saying " yo' kid I'm from 183rd ". TAKI works as a messenger, going through all 5 boroughs of the city. When he travels he writes his name on all of the stations that he came upon, he was "up" (name being written everywhere). Which is an important part of graffiti, but this objective does not have any importance at this time.

In 1971, a reporter from the New York Times looking for a story, tracked TAKI down and interviewed him. As a result the article was hot, this gave TAKI his 15 minutes, and sparked a citywide rush of all of these kids wanting fame that TAKI received. Kids were very impressed by the notoriety of a name that appeared all over the city, therefore they now realize the pride they felt in seeing and having their friends see and talk about whom they saw up.The kids also realized that in order to get fame they must go beyond the neighborhood. This began the frenzy of competition for fame. As hundreds of kids following what TAKI did, even though he followed someone named JULIO 204, that was writing graffiti for years, but never outside of his neighborhood. Realizing that they can use the transportation system for free advertising, is just what the writers needed for a mass audience. Their names traveled outside of the neighborhood, and increased their fame 1000 fold.

Though I lived in Chicago I followed a similar path. New York is considered the birthplace of artistic graffiti, even though the act is preformed all over the world before 1960. The history of graffiti is recent and brief, but has a monumental place in the art world. It is the only art movement that is illegal. And it does not contain a series of welfare kids from torn and broken single-parent homes that are screaming for attention. The phenomenon differs from all other sorts of writing on the bathroom wall of a run-down bar. In New York 1960, teenagers began to write their names all over, I mean everywhere, soon are more surfaces written on then open space. All of these names are appearing, but they were nicknames, few choose to use their real names.