Philly Handstyles are Sloppy?
Graffiti spans the whole world, with countless people who enjoy the art form and with that comes just as many opinions and views on certain topics that might differ from the average writer. Here at the Artist Block, we asked the community for their hot takes and you guys really let your voices be heard! The biggest hot take in the video was “Philly hand styles are well-placed scribbles”. Now they never said they think Philly tags are bad, but believe it or not, many people dont like Philly tags for that exact reason “ it’s just scribbles”, so let’s approach the topic from that angle!
To start this topic off let’s be clear, there is a bunch of confusion about Philly tags from on lookers and most people view these hand styles as scribbles. A large part of this is because many tags aren’t done well, and as a result, they do devolve into being just a clustered mess of lines. A poorly done Philly tag really is just an illegible scribble. However, a well-done philly tag finds the balance between stylizing structure, negative space management, and letter positioning, to achieve something that keeps the integrity of the letter. This is a really important aspect of Philly tags because while they’ll often still be hard to read, they are legible if you know the base font style of Philly tags. That’s right, Philly hand styles have an underline alphabet that they largely follow. Now sure, this base can be stylized and changed, no doubt about that, but this base gives the writer some letters that are already well-tuned for exaggerating negative space, positioning, and structure, the three fundamentals commonly used to make Philly tags.
If an onlooker knows this base alphabet, then it makes reading a well-done Philly tag much easier, however theirs still one layer of complexity, and that’s the addition of extensions and details in general. When a writer decides to add extensions and details, one of a few things can happen. Details can make a bad Philly tag worse, or it can make a good tag harder to read, and it can even make a good tag bad. This once again is where knowing that base alphabet comes into play because that knowledge can be used to differentiate details from structure. Once you’ve separated the details from structure, you can see if the hand style is well done with proper letters, or you can see if it’s just a mess of scribbles.
