How did tag graffiti end up very similar everywhere?

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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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Anonymous 0 Comments

Graffiti is just large-scale pirate calligraphy most of the time, Serifs are really popular because they provide crossing horizontal and vertical lines that break up the outline of a normal letter and allow intricate designs while still being legible.

And they tend to be similar because straying too far from established fonts often yields less appealing results.

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