In November 2007, I posted many photos of stencil art from midtown Sacramento. (Sacramento’s Urban Heiroglyphics)

At the time, I didn’t get around to displaying the many pieces of sticker art Vlady and I found on the same day in the same region. I’ll share them with you now. many of these were signed “ZITS”. A couple of them were promotional stickers rather than hand-drawn or stencil art, but were similarly plastered on public property.

Click on any image below for a larger version. The images are in chronological order as we walked.

face & heart	Made You Look (zits)	computer monitor?	Meat Is 4 Zombies! (zits)
No Guns, God + Government (zits)	“Danger Kerser” / Incredible Hulk	sad face (zits)	whore / urine #1
I Can’t See… I’m a Cripple… I Wear Glasses! (zits)	Upper Playground	Righteous Movement	sign full of stickers

I’ve learned a lot in the past three years about everything a teacher has to do that isn’t teaching. One of those things is marketing/selling a new course. Last year I didn’t market my design courses enough so I ended up with not enough students in them. Consequently I am teaching life science this year in addition to 3 design classes (I love biology, but most of the these students don’t want to be there; so you can imagine how much fun that is for a teacher.)

This year I’ve been doing design favors for the teacher who is in charge of T-shirt and banner printing. In exchange for a couple of T-shirt designs I did for him, he’s going to let me print a number of full-color banners on laminated paper.

I’m going to have him print up two of these 4-foot banners (click for larger image):

Vlady and I discovered a bunch of decaying warehouses by the river bike path last Sunday. It was evident that kids used these to practice their stuff. Some of the work was outside the building, but much of it was inside. None of it was visible to many people, as this bike path is rather unknown. Graffiti artists need to practice too!

Outside:

Inside:

Apologies to the artists: I’d give you credit if I knew your names!

Here are five graffiti fonts from dafont.com you can download and install for free.

Graffiti

Keny Graffiti

Zit Graffiti

Graffiti Treat

Amsterdam Graffiti

There are 62 “graffiti” fonts at fontspace.com, but these are the most appealing to my eyes:

Whoa!

Cancontrol

RoteFlora

KrylonGothic

Bboy

A few more I found at graffitifonts.net:

Graffpitty

Homeboy

Degrassi

To install fonts on Windows:
1. Unzip the .zip font file you downloaded (right-click, choose “Extract All” and a location)
2. Drag the unzipped font file into the Fonts folder (you will find the Fonts folder in your C: drive, inside the Windows folder); font files can end in .ttf, .otf, .fon, .ttc, or .pfb, among others.

Coloring-pages-book-for-kids-boys.com has a wealth of wonderful “coloring pages”, including graffiti-style bubble-letters (click on the images to go to the related pages):

I have an idea to print these out and encourage students not only to imitate the styles, but color them in with special colorful touches, like highlights and shading. After becoming familiar with these styles, students would be urged to start developing their own styles.