Over three decades in devel­op­ment, aerosol art has grown into a com­plex and sys­tem­atic hand let­ter­ing art­form. World­wide, prac­ti­tion­ers have devel­oped regional com­mon­al­i­ties lead­ing to dis­tinct geo­graph­i­cal styles. While “style writ­ers” intro­duce new ideas, their dis­cov­er­ies echo through­out the inter­na­tional graffiti community.

Thanks to the inter­net, the fusion of style has become common prac­tice among the new gen­er­a­tion. Amer­i­can aerosol artist RIME began a project he calls The Exchange, a system of trad­ing sketches and ideas with style writ­ers world­wide. With twelve of the world’s best aerosol artists par­tic­i­pat­ing in The Exchange, they are cer­tain to develop unique hybrid styles to be mim­ic­ked by gen­er­a­tions to come.

FontShop’s Wes Wong spoke with RIME about the impact and future of The Exchange.

The styles of YES2 and EWOK mix to create this “YES2” piece.
Click on images for larger size.

Wes: What is The Exchange all about?

RIME: I came up with the idea late one night in Jan­u­ary 2005, and have been coor­di­nat­ing every­thing. I’ve always wanted to try dif­fer­ent meth­ods of paint­ing and to work with other writ­ers. Lately, I’ve come to the point where I was tired of doing my name and the same brand of graf­fiti. I wanted to try some­thing dif­fer­ent. One of the rea­sons I started The Exchange was that I wanted to get myself to sketch again and to try out dif­fer­ent sets of let­ters. A lot of my friends felt the same way.

It started when I talked to SEVER about trad­ing out­lines. Orig­i­nally, I emailed 5 writ­ers; REVOK, SEVER, YES2, EWOK and GESO; making one mass email with a pro­posal of what I wanted to do.

It all started off as a mass email that was going around. We were writ­ing to each other saying what we think a bout cer­tain pieces and styles, giving each other critiques.

Unfor­tu­nately GESO couldn’t con­tinue and was replaced by BATES. Each of us was given a choice of which writer we wanted to team up with. The next addi­tions were PERSUE, ESTEME, SNOW, KACAO77, TOTEM and SERCH.

The Exchange con­tin­ued and even­tu­ally I put it on my website.

“Bates” by BATES (DK). Sketches by RIME (US).

Where did you see it going?

When I started it, I didn’t know where it was going. I didn’t know if the writ­ers were going to keep doing it and I wasn’t plan­ning on putting it on the web­site. Maybe some­time down the road the project may expand with more inter­na­tional artists participating.

Do you see your styles chang­ing as a result of the collaboration?

The orig­i­nal 6 people that I picked, were people that I am directly influ­enced by. Work­ing closely with them, I am even more influ­enced by their work. I’ve learned dif­fer­ent ways of paint­ing by trying to recre­ate and expand on the sketch that was given to me.

BATES said that, before he did REVOK’s exchange, he never out­lined the bub­bles behind his pieces. It was some­thing new to him and he might incor­po­rate it to his style.

“Revok” by Revok (left). “Bates” design by REVOK, exe­cuted by BATES (right).

I just did a piece this week­end and when I stepped back to look at it, I was able to see a little bit of SEVER, little bit of REVOK, and a little bit of EWOK. I see that influ­ence hap­pen­ing. With The Exchange, you can go on the web­site, even see an action shot, then read a response from the writer. You get some inside infor­ma­tion about their process, and you get more of an idea of what it took to create that piece.

There are 12 of us in total, and a lot of us have never even met each other before. We only know each other by our graf­fiti, but we are in touch on a reg­u­lar basis through emails. When I pair up with a writer like KACAO77, who speaks very little Eng­lish, it cre­ates a tem­po­rary part­ner­ship. I’m work­ing with him, send­ing him emails back and forth talk­ing about an out­line. We work together up to the point of paint­ing it, after we talk about the results. I think it’s going to be real inter­est­ing when we all meet up. It’s kind of like pen pals.

“Kacao” sketch by RIME (above). Exe­cuted paint­ing by KACAO (below).

What do you think is going to happen with The Exchange?

I’ve met a lot of newer writ­ers that came out within the past 2 years. A lot of them have no sense of style. What I’m hoping is that it will lure in the younger gen­er­a­tion and influ­ence them to think more con­sciously about let­ter­ing style. Put let­ters first before any­thing else. Before the color scheme or the back­ground. Just to work towards making really good base forms.

I’m trying to get every­one in The Exchange to approach graf­fiti let­ter­ing as an art form. I’m trying to make it so that we can talk about our graf­fiti as if we are cri­tiquing a piece of fine art. I think a lot of graf­fiti writ­ers sell them­selves short when they try to sep­a­rate graf­fiti from art in general.

One of the ideas I would like to get across to those out­side of the graf­fiti scene is, people should under­stand that cre­at­ing good graf­fiti let­ter­ing is very hard to do. There is a method to the mad­ness; the act of paint­ing a name can require intense skill and years of dedication.

This Web Extra is pub­lished in con­junc­tion with Font mag­a­zine, FontShop’s free pub­li­ca­tion on typog­ra­phy and design. Issue 005: Leg­i­bil­ity explores the topics of graf­fiti and the alpha­bet. If you received Font 004, you’re sub­scribed — 005 should arrive in your mail­box within a few weeks. If not, sub­scribe now!