In 2005, one of the most well-shared images on the internet was the various pictures of the work done by street artist Banksy in the UK. He made popular the style of using stencils to create simple three-colour images which had nearly photorealistic qualities. The growing availability of computers had made it easy to create a high-quality planar portrait of a face, and have that be recognizable when reproduced on concrete.
This methodology turns the practice of graffiti on its head. In the years since TAKI and Cornbread, store owners and police officers had become much more clever when it comes to preventing graffiti on their property. In order to tag something, your approach needed to be very simplistic to avoid getting caught. Vast colourful murals were relegated to trainyards and abandoned buildings. Using a stencil enables the artist to lay down a highly recognizable image in mere minutes.
Banksy's work has always struck me as rather sophomoric. It reeks of the ignorant cleverness seen only in 17 year olds. Despite its puerile nature, I do enjoy the provocative nature of his stencils. Maybe society needs to go back to middle-school and brush up on the fundamentals? Maybe Banksy is deliberately speaking to society on a grade-6 reading level.
Aside from the social commentary and mysterious intrigue which follows Banksy, it is interesting to see how stencil-art graffiti affects type. A well-made stencil can reproduce the same work hundreds of times, although it is limited to a specific size. In order to push the impact of the stencil medium, many artists elect to use stencil-based typefaces. In the past century, stencil type has been often associated with military supply and the brutal simplicity with which they name things. Military stencils are often more impactful when arranged at an angle. Using type such as this can have a tremendous Orwellian slap in the face impact on the viewer. Nothing says fear and disarray like a stencil-painted text saying "quarantine", "fallout shelter", or "food rations". The repetitive sameness of it all is reminiscent of Warhol.