Broadly speaking, I’ve noticed 2 “styles” of tag graffiti: Serif-y line signature-like tags and big bubble writing. This is broadly speaking, there are of course subtleties, but as an outsider, graffiti can look very similar and does feel like they mostly fall into these 2 groups, whether it’s in North America, Europe, etc. You don’t usually hear “that is European style tagging”, I just see bubbly text no matter the location, and they not noticeable different to an outsider the way, say, American food looks different than Chinese food.
Was tagging a thing everywhere and they happened to look similar? Did styles in different places converge? Was there a cult of bubble taggers and the leader told them to spread the gospel around the world? Am I wrong with a biased dataset (noting of course there can be lesser seen visual styles)? ELI5.
Flairing as “other” as this is sort of a sociology topic, probably.
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Graffiti is (almost always) illegal. So it needs to be executed quickly. This restriction of the medium greatly influenced the style. The bubble style is a generally quick way of making 3D letters. The other style I see around here as much as the two you describe would be when fire extinguishers are re-purposed, filled with paint, and used to write massive tags. And when paint rollers are used to put up big block shaped letters. At some point it stops being ‘tags’ but (again in the interest of speed and not-getting-caught) stencils, paste-ups, and stickers are also popular
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