Poster Boy,
Graffiti Artist or Graphic Designer?
How far can we go to interpret someone’s artwork as graphic design, rather than as fine art? In the subways of New York City, a graffitist known as Poster Boy has recently been dismantling the posters and advertisements that litter the walls of the subway stations. Unlike most subway-poster vandals, Poster boy does not create obscenities with his graffiti, rather he takes the design work of others and rearranges it as he sees fit.(Raftery) Since he goes against the norm and creates a more “respectable” form of graffiti, many people look past the fact that what he is doing is vandalism and they see Poster Boy’s work as a strike against consumerism. He goes against consumerism effectively by changing the text in his posters into a new meaning, for example, he rearranged an Iron Man poster to say “IRAN = NAM”.(Raftery) By changing this text he gets people to look at real issues that are going on today, and takes his viewers minds off of the media. Rather than creating normal graffiti, Poster Boy’s work has a deliberate purpose behind it; which makes people recognize and respect his work.
Understanding this, it’s clearly plausible to say that Poster Boy’s work cannot be simply “grouped in” with normal graffiti. Though his work is an act of vandalism, I believe that Poster Boy’s work can be considered graphic design. Poster Boy’s goal as an artist is to target consumerism, and to do this he turns consumerism’s own tools against itself. What better way to attack consumerism than to fight fire with fire? Many may argue that his work isn’t graphic design, that all he’s doing is cutting and pasting pieces of paper. But what exactly is graphic design? What factors define artwork as graphic design, fine art, or even graffiti? A strict definition of graphic design is an artwork that is comprised of symbols, images and text to communicate visually or commercially. Since Poster Boy is clearly destroying advertisements to complete his own artwork, doesn’t that mean that he is using the same types of components to create his own artwork?
Not only does he use other advertisements for his own work, he also rearranges the text in his pieces to convey his own personal message. In one work, Poster Boy altered a subway door sign to say “Do Not Lean on Poor” and in another work he altered an advertisement for the Drug Enforcement Administration to say “Iran: Every Deal Can Turn Deadly.”(Kennedy) In most of Poster Boy’s Designs, he works with the text in many interesting ways, and usually tries to match the font with the advertisement he’s altering. This attention to the font also shows a graphic design quality in his work. Due to his outlandish designs, Poster Boy’s graffiti style has gained the attention of many New York City residents and is becoming more and more popular.
This amount of attention clearly shows that Poster Boy has effectively commercialized his ideas, and that his message has effectively been sent through his designs. What Poster Boy is doing is pulling the general public into the art world, by advertising through dismantling and rearranging posters and ads. By manipulating the media, he has also gained the attention of the general public, which is generally the same audience that a Graphic Designer aims for. Graphic Design is generally used in advertisements and magazines to attract consumers to certain products and publications. Poster Boy’s artwork has its own way of attracting the same consumers away from the magazines and advertisements. His art has attracted so many admirers that it has gone as far as beginning the “Poster Boy movement”.(Kennedy) Even though many may still consider Poster Boy’s work to be graffiti, there’s an even greater amount of people that would agree that it’s something more than that; that it’s Graphic Design.
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