eyes on

Early modernist graffiti can be dated back to box cars in the early 1920s
yet the graffiti movement seen in today ’s contemporary world really
originated through the minds of political activists and gang members of
the 1960s.

graffiti

origin
The “pioneering era” of graf-
fiti took place during the
years 1969 through 1974.
This time period was a time
of change in popularity and
style. New York City be-
came the new hub (formally
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)
of graffiti tags and images.
Graffiti artists during this
time period sought to put
as many markings up as
possible around the city.
This was the ultimate goal
of exposure. Soon after the
migration from Philadelphia
to NYC, the city produced
one of the first graffiti artists
to gain media attention in
New York, TAKI 183. TAKI 183
was a youth from Washing-
ton Heights, Manhattan who
worked as a foot messenger.
His tag is a mixture of his
name Demetrius (Demetraki),
TAKI, and his street number,
183rd. Being a foot messen-
ger, he was constantly on the
subway and began to put
up his tags along his travels.
This spawned a 1971 article
in the New York Times titled
“’Taki 183’ Spawns Pen Pals”.
Julio 204 is also credited as
an early writer, though not
recognized at the time out-
side of the graffiti subculture.
Other notable names from
that time are: Stay High 149,
PHASE 2, Stitch 1, Joe 182,
Junior 161 and Cay 161. Bar-
bara 62 and Eva 62 were also
important early graffiti artists
photographed by/ Thomas Hawk
source/ flickr.com
3
in New York, and are the first
women to become known for
writing graffiti.
Also taking place during this
era was the movement from
outside on the city streets to
the subways. Graffiti also saw
its first seeds of competition
around this time. The goal of
most artists at this point was
“getting up”: having as many
tags and bombs in as many
places as possible. Artists
began to break into subway
yards in order to hit as many
trains as they could with a
lower risk, often creating
larger elaborate pieces of art
along the subway car sides.
This is when the act of bomb-
ing was said to be officially
established.
Example of a graffiti “tag”
By 1971 tags began to take
on their signature calligraphic
appearance because, due to
the huge number of artists,
each graffiti artist needed
a way to distinguish them-
selves. Aside from the grow-
ing complexity and creativity,
tags also began to grow in
size and scale – for example,
many artists had begun to
increase letter size and line
thickness, as well as outlining
their tags. This gave birth to
the so-called ‘masterpiece’
or ‘piece’ in 1972. Super Kool
223 is credited as being the
first to do these pieces.
text source/ wikipedia.com
4

fashion blogs/
recent development
illustrations by/anna
source/flickr.com
text source/ wikipedia.com
Fashion blogs are increas-
ingly becoming a part of the
mainstream fashion press.
An increasing number of fash-
ion bloggers were invited to
designers’ fashion shows in
2006 compared to previous
years. Large advertisers like
H&M and Gap have bought
advertising on fashion blogs,
and other large companies
like the underwear-maker
Jockey are targeting fash-
ion blogs in their PR efforts.
Many big media organizations
have started fashion blogs
and the best fashion bloggers
are now also being offered
mainstream media positions.
Fashion blogging is also now
regarded as worthy of main-
stream media coverage. The
reference list below shows
the very high caliber of me-
dia publication that have
written about fashion blogs.
These publications include
the Wall Street Journal, New
York Times, Fast Company and
the Sydney Morning Herald.
Fashion blogging is rapidly
becoming a highly profitable
new media business, with
a mixture of independent
blogs and well-funded fash-
ion blog networks compet-
ing to dominate the space.
Manolo’s Shoe Blog is be-
lieved to be the most profit-
able independent fashion
blog, “rumored to be [earn-
ing] around $700,000 a year”
by 2006. Manolo has con-
firmed he earns a six-figure
salary through blogging.
Other commercially success-
ful independent fashion blogs
include The Budget Fashioni-
sta, which reportedly brings
in $150,000 a year in revenue
and The Bag Snob, which “gen-
erates a six-figure income,
mainly from advertising”.
Blogging is hard work, and
few bloggers in any industry
are willing to devote the kind
of time and effort necessary
to build and hold a signifi-
cant audience without some
hope of financial reward.
Bloggers like Manolo of
Manolo’s Shoe Blog gen-
erate enough traffic that
they can monetize it di-
rectly by selling impressions
to advertisers. This is rare.
Pay per click advertising place-
ment is another monetization
tactic employed by many fash-
ion blogs. Recent advances in
contextual ad placement have
rendered PPC placement an
increasingly attractive option.
Virtually all fashion blogs em-
ploy some form of affiliate
marketing, the most straight-
5
forward being the simple
product review. A Fashion
Blog which successfully in-
tegrates affiliate marketing
techniques within its site
is FashionBeans. The writer
blogs about voucher codes,
sales, men’s fashion collec-
tions and news but then links
through to relevant men’s
fashion retailers using affili-
ate links. In addition, there is
a recommended fashion sec-
tion which is generated using
affiliate CSV data feeds to cre-
ate 1000’s of product listings
with up-to-date prices and
deep links to the appropriate
men’s clothing. Affiliate net-
works like Commission Junc-
tion and LinkShare facilitate
this process in exchange for a
piece of the action - normally
a commission of around 5 -
20% of the total transaction.
The proliferation of XML prod-
uct data feeds has added a
new twist to the affiliate mar-
keting play. Companies like
GoldenCan now aggregate
product feeds from multiple
affiliate networks and pro-
vide tools that make it easy
for fashion blogs to expose
product data to both shop-
pers and search spiders. Vel-
vet Way is a good example of
a site that has integrated af-
filiate data feeds with locally-
generated product reviews.