Graffiti Tag Names

I remember whenever I used to observe art classes in college, there was one high school art teacher in Union City, Hilary Webb, who did a unit over graffiti to her classes. I remember them coming up with so much awesome work and how much they LOVED learning about it. Ever since then, I knew I would want to teach graffiti to each of my classes every year.

If you are not teaching graffiti right now as an art teacher, I would strongly adivse you start. This is an amazing thing to teach on to our students. It's such a big part of their culture and generationa and it really does apply to them so much. I have taught graffiti to all ages, and I have yet to have a student (yes, even those troublesome ones!) who did not enjoy this unit.

I usually start off by a PowerPoint that opens up in discussion over the topic of graffiti. Do you think it should be illegal? Why or why not? What are some ways our cities can prevent art vandalism? I also make it clear to them that IT IS A CRIME if you graffiti property THAT IS NOT YOURS. Then I follow up with a lot of examples of graffiti from all over the world. The internet is FULL of amazing graffiti examples, and the kids will be so blown away!

I've done a wide variety of projects for graffiti. For 7th Grade I decided to keep it simple and assign them a "graffiti tag name" drawing. They all had to come up with a tag name, like all graffiti artists and create a signature. I loved this project! I feel like it was a great first time graffiti project especially for younger ages. When you get up higher in grades you can play around some and require them to draw more letters, but I was so impressed with these. They all had a lot of fun coming up with their own tag names too. Here are just a FEW that turned out awesome.