Banksy

Banksy

Banksy, an artist whose identity remains unknown is believed to be born in Bristol, England, around 1974.

 Banksy uses typography in a lot of his images. The text is normally a duller, messy spray paint look but is still easy to read.

His main images are normally a human but he sometimes uses animals like rats and monkeys. His images are used to show his contempt for the government in labeling graffiti as vandalism.

 

The colours he uses are dull and washed out. This fits in to the buildings that are in the area making the image standout less. The colours he uses are Red, Green, Black and White.

 

 The spacing in his images are very open and empty because there and buildings. This makes the image stand out more because it isn’t blocked or flooded by other images and your eye is only drawn to the one image.

 

 The composition in his images is openly spaced with normally an image and text or just an image. He uses duller colours that fit in with the surrounding area and don’t look out of place.

Banksy has a style similar to Blek le Rat who began to work with stencils in 1981 in Paris and Jef Aerosol who sprayed his first street stencil in 1982 in Tours (France), and members of the anarcho-punk band Crass, which maintained a graffiti stencil campaign on the London Tube System in the late 1970s and early 1980s. However Banksy claims that he based his work on that of 3D from Massive Attack, stating, "No, I copied 3D from Massive Attack. He can actually draw."

His design philosophy is to show the government that graffiti can be art and isn’t always tagging. 

His main element of design is his graffiti style of painting. His work normally involves a single character on a blank background and sometimes has typography in them.