Having Trouble Reading Graffiti? This Artist Has Got You Covered

Living in New York it is impossible to walk more than three feet without seeing some graffiti. Some of it is exceptionally bad ass, no doubt, but the majority of our graffiti should be classified simply as tags. While there is definitely artistry in the way that each tagger spray paints their moniker on the walls, subway trains and panel trucks of our fair city they are pretty difficult to read. Thankfully French artist Mathieu Tremblin is here to help us out. The clever street artist has been painting over hard to decipher tags and recreating them in an easily legible font.

Tremblin’s version of the tags makes them seem innocuous and boring, but that’s what makes them so frickin’ cool. After years of walking past graffiti tags every single day our minds eventually adapt to them so much so that they are simply part of our environment. Nobody ever notices new tags unless they are on a previously immaculate surface. But when the tags are in Tremblin’s font they grab you by the ears and force you to pay attention; by making the tags legible you see how mundane the intricately detailed tags really are.

In the gallery below you can get a look at the before and after of some of Tremblin’s more impressive work. When you’re done flipping through the gallery make sure you check out some of Tremblin’s more traditional street art at his website.