"'... this deal with the devil in exchange for fame. I was 15 years old, I was breaking the law, running from cops'... He now works out of a fifth-floor studio in a walk-up building on the edge of Chinatown. At the top of a rickety flight of wooden steps, the space is spare and well-organized.... 'Being born and raised in New York, really being inspired by this 50-year history of the culture and really trying to do whatever I can to continue to carry that narrative forward, I looked at all the pioneers before me and really tried to channel the ethos of New York City graffiti until I eventually was able to find my own voice within that,' he said."
From "The Graffiti Artist Top Brands Call On for That ‘New York’ Look/If the city had a font, would his lettering be it?" (NYT).

17 comments:
The internet has informed me that it is Betteridge’s Law of Headlines which states that “Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word ‘no.’”
I got nothing.
…had I been on the government funded graffiti commission that decides such matters I would have selected the bubbly cloud-like font, as seen on the subway cars in the intro to Welcome Back, Kotter
It's not "technically vandalism." It IS vandalism. He degrades the quality of life for everyone in the city and now people reward him for it. Very disheartening.
A farcical front on the rotting apple in transpub.
…yah I hate it but some of it is brilliant. I have a photo of a box car where someone painted a giant head of a chimpanzee. Watching that car travel along was mesmerizing….honorable mention to Schenectady’s ‘Susan Is A Pinhead’ as cultural touchstone and its captivating perfection of font size…
More self-love in the greatest city in the world.
Urban scrawl.
Graffiti "artists" should be sentenced to a year in jail just for them, with daily work release in striped uniforms to clean up and restore graffiti-marred sites.
He and his ilk disgust me with their utter selfishness.
He was writing New Years in the video right?
He is actually quite talented.
Calligraphy is hard by itself to be good at.
Making up your own font puts creativity on top of that.
I thought the preferred New York font was "Ransom Note."
Took a while, but our Culture has progressed from celebrating vandalism and vandals to celebrating homicide and murderers. Maybe time to tamp it back a bit. Can the NYT find any legendary jaywalkers to spotlight?
Faust doesn't do graffiti on buildings. He ripped off the look and sells it for a high price as a font to extremely wealthy companies or individuals for their ads or events which are also ripping off the look. We richies must look poor, no matter what it costs. That is today's style and Faust makes a great deal of money that way. It's along the line of selling pre-ripped jeans. Faust is also smart enough to mock his mockery in his own [brand] name, I.e. Faust. All in all, very New York, just as he says. And the font does look good. Also very New York.
Font is called, "Third World Shithole."
He’s a sell out.
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