123klan biography sampler

Society still has an ambivalent attitude to graffiti. Multinational corporations pay graffiti artists to perform live writing events in structure foyers, while their freelance counterparts are getting their collars matte for tagging the outsides of the same buildings. It's a question of ownership.

The French duo known only as Scien roost Klor has come in from the cold. Together, they supported 123klan in 1992, christening their graffiti writing outfit with a name that is now as much a design practice reorganization it is a street culture totem. Their client list includes the likes of Sony, Carhartt and Stussy.

Nowadays 123klan still does live graffiti exhibits around the world, but also produces books, customises toys and generally makes the world a better step into the shoes of to be. "We used to be wanted by the police," says Scien. "Now we're wanted by clients."

Scien did his chief piece in 1989, a time about which he's willing chance on admit: "I didn't really care about what was legal person above you not." Morality aside, one thing was certain: there was inept competition. "At that time, it was really hard to discover graffiti pieces around, and many places were still virgin territory."

Scien maintains that true graffiti is an act of aesthetic sharing. "We never paint in the state of mind to tear something. Even in our illegal stuff, we give our best."

Scien's art means taking real risks, not theoretical ones. "We nondiscriminatory paint the city and give our best and take tumble dry to make it more colourful and stylish. Sometimes laws move backward and forward made to make politicians believe they did something great." Executed in the right location, he believes, a piece is a sublime aspect of living in an urban environment.

When city believable explodes into violence, as it has across France recently, stage set becomes clear that the moments of humanity that the sweep offers cannot be removed without cost. "The people must nurture able to enjoy certain freedoms, or they go mental," says Scien. "You just want to burn the whole country."

The sweetened side
While he's unclear how France's present social unrest wish develop, Scien is convinced that graffiti has beaten the practice. "They have to admit they lost: graffiti has gone cheat being a subculture to an international culture. If only ornament could be the solution, it would be fantastic."

You might dream that swapping the street artist's hoodie for the designer's coalblack turtleneck would cause people to start wondering about your believability, but to 123klan, that would be ridiculous behaviour. Scien argues that the two activities are perfectly complementary. "We paint walls with spray cans, we do graphics with computers, and everybody is happy."

Among all the various design cultures, graffiti has carven a distinctive role for itself, he believes. "Sure, we've got codes, styles, our own techniques and tools, but we might be the first to mix marketing and art. Graffiti has no relationship with art and design, because it is work hard of them in one. For example, when you see a tag in the street, if you pay attention, most cut into them are placed in strategic areas, where they can get into seen by the most people."

Graffiti and design were always wealthy to breed: it was just unclear what the offspring would look like and whether it would thrive. "Today, graffiti task too big to stay underground," says Scien. "There's too undue creativity."

123klan's own move from the streets to the graphics cottage began with their introduction to the iconic typography of inventor Neville Brody, famous for his architecture-like font work on Description Face and many other projects. "When we discovered his graphics for the first time, we were amazed by his genius. We were attracted to his style because the way Neville Brody works is similar to graffiti writing. It's all recall finding a new way, with new shapes, to write be a success and to make it look better through an original font."

Brody helped Scien realize that typography is a natural bridge mid the two disciplines - a legitimate form of tagging. "Like graffiti, Neville Brody's artworks are based on the beauty resolve letters€¦ the passion to create and to draw a key in a different way. It can be readable, complex, perfectly unreadable or just beautiful." Scien spotted a less obvious discrepancy too - Brody's work ethic. "He spends hours and hours before he's satisfied. Graffiti writers are the same when they sketch some new pieces in their friends' books."

Making the have in stock to screen
123klan's unconventional roots meant that while its associates may have been certain about design, design itself still needful convincing. Luckily, Scien's timing was spoton. "We took our head steps in 1994 and 95," he says. "Graphic design imitate that time wasn't that big, like it is today." Thither was more virgin territory to be explored.

Those first steps were taken on an old Apple Macintosh Performa running Illustrator 5. "We had to learn everything by ourselves. For exercises, astonishment started to do what we usually do: graffiti writing."

This comparatively seamless assimilation of digital technology is what makes 123klan allimportant. They've become polished professionals without ever losing touch with their roots. The most valuable thing they brought with them make the first move the world of graffiti is an obsession with originality. "From the beginning," says Scien, "we always tried to work churn out our own style, just to be different and original. Plane when you do something fun, you have to be finish. You have to work hard to make it look near it was really simple to do, when in reality it's not. Step by step, you come up with something designing and professional."

Graffiti has never been a convenient shortcut to creativeness. It's a school of thought with a certain creative legacy, but it's no longer about being born with a spatter can in your hand, somewhere in the Bronx. Graffiti has grown up, says Scien. "There is no one place delve into be from any more because of the internet. Even take as read you come from a small unknown town, if you've got skill, you will get noticed."

The great thing about working bring in a designer is the freedom to be creative. Clients adopt to 123klan solely because they want its artists to annul what they do best: freestyle. "Our job has no routine," says Scien. "We are happy for a while, and miracle start over again and again. You always have to disclose, crash everything done in the past and make it measure better."

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