Iit's no secret that graffiti can get pretty... competitive, shall we say, especially in a lot
of urban areas where a lot of graffiti writers are competing for limited wall space. in fact,
it actually was that sort of oversaturation of graffiti writers which initially,
in areas like New York City, gave birth to throw up styles, straight letters, bubble letters,
hollows and much much more. all of those started to be employed by graffiti writers
to help graffiti writers stand out. and that's the key thing here: standing out. when there
were 50 tags on a doorway or in the subway car that you were in, it's a lot easier to just do
say a throw up style or something like that then just try and put another little tag somewhere and
hope you get seen. and that evolution in a lot of ways is really what gave birth to the graffiti
artist rather than just the graffiti writer. but speaking of standing out, today that is what we're
talking about the top four ways that you can personally make your graffiti tags stand out;
tags specifically! so let's get right into it. so these first couple ways are really just employing
some pretty simple artistic concepts to help your graffiti tags stand out. they're going to
be concepts that you are going to really want to know and the last two are sort of some newer wave
graffiti tricks if you will that really can help your graffiti tags stand out as well. number four:
this one may sound pretty obvious and it's definitely a lot easier said than done, don't get
me wrong, but one way to stand out is just find spots that aren't already grilled. for those of
you who haven't heard the term grilled before that is simply a spot that is heavily tagged,
infested with tags almost, or in short just a spot that makes it hard to stand out naturally.
and that is the simplest way to stand out. just find your own spots. like I said, that is a lot
easier said than done, but if we didn't explore the simplest solutions first, what would be the
point right? so moving on. number three: now this one can be super useful if you're competing in
sort of a civilized manner for space, and that is simply use the right colour for the spot. now a
lot of graffiti writers and artists still even to this day gravitate towards using simple black and
white paints and inks in mops, spray cans, Etc or tags and whatnot. and with very good reason!
black and white sort of naturally generates the highest contrast that you can get on a lot of
background colour surfaces. but bearing that in mind when you are competing with a lot of black
and white tags and whatnot sometimes it is just a hot pink or a neon green tag that you can come in
with to immediately draw the eye and make your tag the first one that any graffiti artist or normal
person sees when they walk by. so it's always good to just have a nice mini brightly coloured
graffiti mop with you when you're out there. and secondly, choosing the right colour doesn't only
have to be employed when you're looking at heavily tagged spots or something like that, we can find
plenty of examples here where proper colour use helped a tag stand out even more. if we take a
look at this video here of Kanser on the Grog Channel, there's about 10 examples in this video
alone. here he is crushing this dumpster which is like a dark blue, so he simply whips out a white
for that perfect contrast. if you want to contrast a little bit better via colour theory, you could
have used like a neon yellow or something there. and that's the very same thing here with the white
on black right there that you're seeing. a more subtle example is the red on beige here. this is
also a perfect example of the first point. first he found a spot that wasn't already grilled. this
is his spot! and secondly it may seem like there are a lot of colours that would have worked on
that background, and there are, but instead of using say a yellow or an orange which wouldn't
have really worked at all he's used that very bright red which was complemented perfectly by
that beige background I.E the environment that the tag is in. and that alone makes it stand out
so much more. number two: use the right tool for the job! there is a pretty good argument out there
that says that in almost any situation spray paint is almost just better to be using because it is
bolder, you can write bigger with it, it's more prominent. it's not necessarily for everything,
but it is for a lot of cases if ever come across a spot where everyone has used a 10mm drip mop,
pull out your 25mm drip mop or your spray can! and when you start combining that with the third thing
that I told you, or the third thought top thing, the second thing I said which was the third...
you know what I mean. when you start combining that with making sure you use the right colour for
the job then you start to be on to something here. for example I have a trusty collage of doorways
here that I was able to find on a new york-based site. if we look at the one on 312 here,
it makes it clear that Staino just plain used a bigger mop and as a result he owns that doorway.
that's just end of story, game over. it is just the first thing you see. it's what your eye is
gravitating towards. similarly this Noxer tag, love that tag by the way, Noxer has done it bold,
he's used spray paint where everyone else brought their little mops and he just owns that doorway
now. it's as simple as that. this picture of all these doorways is actually really good because in
each picture it employs one of the last two things that we talked about. your eye is drawn to one or
two tags on each doorway specifically because they were mindful of the colour that they were using,
the orientation, or the boldness of the tag. so feel free to pause and take a look at that
a little bit it more. if you're serious about understanding these artistic concepts that
really are going to help you stand out amongst a ton of writers in an urban area, these simple
concepts are the ones that will serve you best in any area of art but especially graffiti art.
and they are the ones that are going to put you ahead of other graffiti artists. number one:
and the final way to make your graffiti tags stand out is one that really has only gained
popularity in recent times we'll sa.y and that is simply busting out those dual tone
colour tags or those multi-coloured tags via you know your split streakers or just using
two different markers that have two different colours. whether it be by doing exactly that,
alternating colours between each letter, or using some of those split streakers to stand out it is a
sure fire way to get your tag noticed. now this is great but you do still have to consider what
colours you're using on a particular background or surface and this is personally why I don't
really love the streakers that are like six or eight different colours, because some of them
inevitably just end up clashing with each other or at the very least the surface that they are on,
the colour of it. and that only gets amplified if you aren't dropping a fire hand style. Wekman and
Resk 12, these guys that I'm showing you here they can get away with this stuff because their
hand styles are so professional and refined. but if you're using wacky colour combos in some of
these scenarios where it doesn't necessarily work, then well it just makes you look bad...
but with that being said, if you are interested in those split streakers specifically that you're
seeing on screen, you can check out the full review and tagging test that we did with them
here on the channel. That is what is on screen for you guys to check out right now. I hope to
see you over there soon! until then feel free to throw a like on the video. Peace!