Across the road from my old design studio was a dark green wall that was regularly tagged with crusty glyphs and the council would regularly paint over them again - a daft cycle.
My own spray skills very much lacking, I spoke to graphic artist Sean Duffell (aka Gh0stie), who said he’d paint the wall based on my design - which I greatly appreciate (and kinda feel bad about) because he’s very much an artist in his own rite.
So, I first photographed and comped the wall together (notice the fresh lick o’ council paint).
I then mapped out the bricks - in case Sean wanted to map my design to the wall (he didn't in the end).
Then I designed the mural, using that template.
I laser-cut some aeroplane stencils of various sizes, printed the reference and handed over to Sean.
Bingggggg!!!!!!!!! (Sparkles etc.)
Incidents of tagging on this wall seemed to reduce to about one tag every few months, which the Wellington City Council did a great job of cleaning off each time. That’s down from around one tag per week.
The Wellington City Council was spending around $65,000p/a on graffiti removal in 2013.