Street Logos

by Tristan Manco

Subverted signs, spontaneous drawings, powerful monolithic symbols, and curious characters represent a worldwide outdoor gallery of free contemporary art. Graffiti art is constantly changing. Fresh coats of paint and newly pasted posters appear overnight in cities across the world. New artists, new ideas, and new tactics displace faded images in a perpetual process of renewal and metamorphosis. From Los Angeles to Barcelona, Stockholm to Tokyo, Melbourne to Milan, wall spaces are a breeding ground for graphic and typographic forms as artists unleash their daily creations. Current graffiti art is reflective of the world around it. Using new materials and techniques, its innovators are creating a language of forms and images infused with contemporary graphic design and illustration. Fluent in branding and graphic imagery, they have been replacing tags with more personal logos and shifting from typographic to iconographic forms of communication. Street Logos is a worldwide celebration of these new developments in twenty-first-century graffiti, an essential sourcebook for all art and design professionals, and a delight to everyone excited by the vitality of the street. 423 color illustrations

Genres: Art, Design, Reference, Nonfiction, Photography, Art Design, Street Art

128 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2004

Reviews

[Victoria Moore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whenever I pass by a colorful mural or piece of street art I can't help admiring the talent and determination that went into placing it on its unorthodox canvas. Tristan Manco's book "Street Logos" was a deeper trip into this appreciation because it helped me to understand more fully about the different types of street art there are and how international the phenomena has become. The chapters-"Signs," "Iconographics," "Logos," "Urban Characters," and "Free Forms"-also described the way artists change our view of urban existence with their inclusion of cartoon-like characters, profound words, "calligraphic signs" on top of white pedestrian crossing lines, and "road markings." By comparing murals and singular paintings to "religious, cultural and scientific signs" Manco revealed why styles like "Iconographics" are similar to Coca-Cola, Nike and other advertising brands.
As journalistic as they are political a lot of the artists featured, in the book, want to make their own statements about what today's citizens are forced to deal with. In the mode of Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat they use humor, irony and juxtaposition to create melting pink doughnuts (Maya Hayuk), simple flowers ("Flowerguy"/Michael De Feo) and "eye-patched aliens" known as "Buff Monsters." I'm not sure where street art will show up in the future, or who'll change its style, but I am sure that this book is an important step in a positive direction.

[Orsolya · Rating 3 out of 5]

The street art and graffiti world is generally only known for popular artists such as Banksy and Swift (a female, mind you). Street Logos pushes past the usual "mainstream" artists and focuses merely on the locos (think of it as brand marketing and the brand of these artists) of lesser known names. With photos and and small bios, Street Logos is a picture art book mixed with facts. A great coffee-table book.

On a biased note: it also feature my favorite artists, the twins known as Os Gemeos.

[Lief · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting overview of the progression of street art. This is not a traditional novel, by any means, but more a means of showing through photographs the different logos taken on by street artists around the world. While the book has some insights and encourages one to look for street art presented in one's own city, I ultimately view it as more of a coffee table book than anything else.

[Ashley Godfrey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Out of all my art books this is definately one of my least favourite... I think the pictures chosen were of poor subject matter and overall bad quality: photos were pixelated, out of focus, dim and colourless; the exact opposite of what it should be! It's such a scheme too because I have several more of Tristan's books, and they are all beautiful! Really let down with this one to be honest

[Faedyl · Rating 4 out of 5]

En este libro a pesardel poco texto que nos presenta, existe un interesante analisis sobre la diferencia entre graffiti y street art. En muchos de los papers se lo cita como referente y por eso no puede dejarse de lado a la hora de entender y abarcar la ya amplia bibliografia del arte urbano contemporàneo.

[Benjamin Wetmore · Rating 3 out of 5]

Parts seemed lazy. Brief commentary, very broad overviews. The pictures were alright, but at some point the book just devolves into giving a rundown of artists. It had a lot more potential than that.

[Jason Bootle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice to see many artists that I'm not familiar with, lots from Europe, namely Spain. Reasonable collection, never quite sure about these books, they are always a jumping off point to explore further.