The Godfather of Graffiti

Richard “Richie” Mirando, known as Seen, born in 1961 in the Bronx of New York and he became one of the pioneers of graffiti.

He started to paint when he was eleven in the New York Subway with his crew of writers called United Artists (UA) and they were known because of their whole cars (It’s a graffiti that occupies an entire train car) and “top to bottom” (graffiti that goes from the highest part of the traen to the lowest).

One of his most famous graffiti was the one done in the letters of the Hollywood sign. 

A lot of writers around the world consider him like the Godfather of graffiti.

Montana Colors

Hello everyone!

Long time without having news about this great world of graffiti. Today I want to mention a Spanish brand called Montana Colors.

Montana Colors is a company dedicated to the manufacture and distribution of products related to graffiti. Products manufactured are aerosols, markers... The company was founded in 1994 in Barcelona. It dates back to 1993 when Jordi Rubio, through market research, notes that a customer of their company (Felton, a company dedicated to the manufacture of paints) exceeds sales of other employees. He went there to visit them and found that the dependents were two experts in graffiti.

Jordi proposed the idea to his company to develop more products for graffiti, but that idea was rejected. Finally Jordi and Miquel Galea (a business partner) decided to leave Felton company and join the two graffiti experts, founding a new company called Montana Colors.

They begin making a spray of 200ml with a range of 60 different colors. It was known as "Classic" and it stood in their fine and clean lines, it had a good coverage, and also the price was affordable.

Their first major appearance was in an event called "Aerosol Art" in 1994 in Barcelona. From here, they began to be known all over Europe, and even writers came from other countries like France and Italy to buy Montana.

In 1995 they manufactured a new spray of 400ml capacity. The rapid increase in sales led to increase their distribution to several European countries. Henceforth, they began to emerge as a leader in the world of graffiti.

Future of PR

First of all I’m going to resume what are the Public Relations. They are communication activities through the media that analyze what the customers need and try to give them some solutions. Marketing, Public Relations and Advertising go together trying to satisfy the necessities of the customers.

The Public Relations work in different fields, looking for the necessities of the customers of those fields, but in the future in my opinion one of the most important things will be Internet.

Gradually are emerging more and more companies of all types, they need to innovate their products to be the "best" in its sector. To that end they use PR, marketing and advertising.

Today the Internet is a very useful tool because it can “capture” different kind of costumers from different parts of the world with out necessity of the direct contact. In my opinion this cause more effect than the TV because everything it is published can be read in a few minutes in any part of the world. For example, we have blogs or websites where we can promote products and sell so attractive and appealing to the customers.

Relationship between graffiti and hip hop

As I said in the other comments, graffiti has been very united to hip hop (specially in New York and some places of Europe). The hip hop appears in the 1960's in some neighborhoods of New York like the Bronx. Normally the people that sang hip hop were African and Latin americans.

We have to mention that graffiti has been an important part in the hip hop culture. We can say that it is the artistic branch of this culture.

Also it is important to emphasize that a lot of clothes of the singers are decorated with graffitis. Normally the singers that paint, have their own graffitis reflected on their sweatshirts.

It's quite extensive graffiti relationship with the culture of hip hop. There are other elements like the b-boys (the ones that do breakdance), MC's, skateboard...


We can have a good idea of the relation of this two elements (hip hop and graffiti) with communication. The first one is very important, because the music has been a very good way to express ideas. For example, the hippie movement, with their music had a strong impact against the Vietnam war.

And graffiti sometimes can be the way of expression that can't be expressed with words.

Questions about graffiti

1- Why people do graffiti?


There have been made lots of researchs trying to find an explication of why people do graffiti. This is not something of young people. The graffiti doesn't depend of the age.

In my opinion, it's impossible to find any answer to that question. As I said, the graffiti is made of people of all ages, and this shows us that every person is different, every one have different ideas or think different.
There are people that paint because they love painting in illegal places, other paint because they want to be the most known writer, others because they love the adrenaline running in front of the police, and I'm sure that someone don't know why he paints...There are lots of reasons of why the people paint.

But I think there is one thing we have in common, and is the necessity to be different of the rest of the people. I mean, we don't want to be the same as all the people, we don't want to be part of the crowd. We need to be different, and doing graffiti we know that we are going against the law. "There is no major pleasure than doing the things you can't do".

2- Art or vandalism?


This is also another important question. We cannot understand the graffiti with out illegality. Some people will think that because of this, it's vandalism, but I would like to open their minds with this blog.
Of course the graffiti is related with vandalism, if not, it wouldn't be illegal. But we also have art and a good way of communication. As the famous phrase says: "A picture is worth than a thousand words".

It depends also, the person who is painting. There are some that want to bomb the cities to be the most known writer, and there are others that instead of doing this, they want to express something with their art. They want to transmit something to the citizens that are seeing his graffiti.

This are two of the ways how the graffiti moves. For example, we can compare the graffiti with the money. With money we can build flats for people that don't have where to live or we can destroy a country or kill a person. With the graffiti is the same, we can destroy or we can transmit feelings.

Spanish Graffiti

The Spanish graffiti appears in the 1980's. The people and graffiti styles were very different comparing with the New York and European style. this was because the Spanish guys weren't related with an urban tribe or hip hop group of music.


                                                             

They were rockers, and the first writer was known as Muelle. He was a very known writer in the 1980's and after him, other writers as Glub, Remebe, Max 501..                                   

This first writers were also known as "flecheros" (I don't know how to say in English), because they included in their tags an arrow to decorate more their tags. This is another difference with the New York and European style.

They painted to claim and to protest because of the attitude of the society. Normally they painted fences to cover the constant barrage of advertising that they were subjected.

A very important thing is that they respect cultural building, but this nowadays has been lost. That's why in our days the graffiti is related sometimes with vandalism.

Talking about the 1990's, it is important to emphasize the appearance of the first factory of sprays in Spain called Montana. Nowadays is internationally known.

                                      

In this years, the graffiti became more related with the rap and hip hop and because of that, more related to the New York style.

Graffiti in the 1960's and 1970's

I’m going to talk about the first decades of the graffiti, and the relation of it with communication.

All starts in the 1960’s in the EEUU specially in New York, where some young people wanted to send messages to their friends and warn their enemies. They made this writing on the street walls. The first “writer” known was Taki 183.

Normally they have a nickname (short nickname for their enemies don’t forget it), and their messages were always signed with the nickname. This “signatures” were called “tag”(nowadays it’s also known like that).

In the 1970’s there were a lot of writers, so they began to make groups called crews. This was a very good way to get notice because there could be 10-15 people writing their tags and also writing the crew name. This was very important for them to get more respect on the streets.

As you can imagine, the writers were more famous if they painted their nick everywhere, but it also was important where they sign. For example, they won more respect if they painted in difficult places. Apart of painting in the streets, they began to paint trains, and all kind of fences.

Another important thing is that close to the tags some of the writers start painting some images to highlight more from the others.

This is a very briefly history of those decades of the graffiti, but I think you can have an idea of how it was. I see a lot of communication in those decades. 

They painted the walls, as a way to communicate with their enemies and avoid the fight. This is how grafiti started as a way of communication. 

The appearance of the crews was very significant, because it represents a whole group of friends. They painted mainly in their neighbourhood stating their territory. Sometimes, when they go to other group’s territory and they paint there, was like a provocation. Nowadays we can see some advertisements in the media that are attacking other products of the same industry.

The graffiti in those decades was a very good and cheap way of communication between the people.

In the next comments I will explain the next decades and the way the graffiti had change from a simple way of communication to a form of expression and art, and also how the vandalism is present nowadays.