Eyes On.

eyes on

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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

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origin

The “pioneering era” of graffiti took place during the years 1969 through 1974. This time period was a time of change in popularity and style. New York City became 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 Washington 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 messenger, 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 outside 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. Barbara 62 and Eva 62 were also important early graffiti artists

photographed by/ Thomas Hawk source/ flickr.com

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 bombing 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 themselves. Aside from the growing 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

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source/flickr.com

text source/ wikipedia.com

illustrations by/anna

recent development

fashion blogs/

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Fashion blogs are increasingly becoming a part of the mainstream fashion press. An increasing number of fashion 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 fashion 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 mainstream media coverage. The reference list below shows the very high caliber of media 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 fashion blog networks competing to dominate the space. Manolo’s Shoe Blog is be-

lieved to be the most profitable independent fashion blog, “rumored to be [earning] around $700,000 a year” by 2006. Manolo has confirmed he earns a six-figure salary through blogging. Other commercially successful independent fashion blogs include The Budget Fashionista, which reportedly brings in $150,000 a year in revenue and The Bag Snob, which “generates 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 significant audience without some hope of financial reward. Bloggers like Manolo of Manolo’s Shoe Blog generate enough traffic that they can monetize it directly by selling impressions to advertisers. This is rare. Pay per click advertising placement is another monetization tactic employed by many fashion blogs. Recent advances in contextual ad placement have rendered PPC placement an increasingly attractive option. Virtually all fashion blogs employ some form of affiliate marketing, the most straight-

forward being the simple product review. A Fashion Blog which successfully integrates affiliate marketing techniques within its site is FashionBeans. The writer blogs about voucher codes, sales, men’s fashion collections and news but then links through to relevant men’s fashion retailers using affiliate links. In addition, there is a recommended fashion section which is generated using affiliate CSV data feeds to create 1000’s of product listings with up-to-date prices and deep links to the appropriate men’s clothing. Affiliate networks like Commission Junction 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 product data feeds has added a new twist to the affiliate marketing play. Companies like GoldenCan now aggregate product feeds from multiple affiliate networks and provide tools that make it easy for fashion blogs to expose product data to both shoppers and search spiders. Velvet Way is a good example of a site that has integrated affiliate data feeds with locallygenerated product reviews.