May 9, 2020

I had my conversation with Niceo earlier this week. While it was insightful, I feel I didn’t gather as much from it as I did the other interviews. Maybe it’s the fact that Niceo is an older artist (age stated as unknown but from clues of growing up in the 70s, I’m guessing around 50 or so) compared to Peter Chinman and Cyzon Griffin (both people around their mid to late 20s). To elaborate, I felt like someone with a longer time in the art industry in new york city would have more expressive things to say.

On the other hand, I don’t want to downplay the interview because I still learned a lot. One main takeaway is that according to Niceo, a lot of the different important aspects of graffiti were implemented into modern advertising. Niceo says that the principle of graffiti is to be able to get people to understand something as easy as possible, which means colors that pop (nothing too dark or colors that blend together) and typefaces that are readable and large so they are legible.

In addition, I learned that not every graffiti artist begins with a set path. In Niceo’s case, he initially was interested in doing throw up art to ‘be cool’ and as an activity with friends; no more than fun and games. Then it became an activity to make more of a statement, to put things out in the community. I found that very interesting. I still have to edit the audio but I’m glad to have completed the final interview of the project. I feel accomplished! Now time to finish up the animation and such.