Gang Tags

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He sat on the shiny pink bus seat, scrawling something in oafish concentration. He'd straighten up and look at what he had drawn, and then hunch over to doodle something else. He was wearing a pair of absurd powder-blue pants with matching shoes, and a ballcap screwed sideways into his billowing red afro. Some stupid white kid trying to look like a rapper.

I usually ignore people like this on the bus, but I took notice after the guy held out his notebook at arm's length for about the tenth time. The lad was actually practising his gang tag as he rode to school.

If you live in a city, you've seen them. They are on bus shelters, mailboxes, fences - anywhere a dog can lift its leg, some dumbass has painted a gang tag. They are an urban blight, but I also find them hilarious for their inherent stupidity.

For the purposes of slamming their design, I'm going to assume that gang tags are meant to be seen by the public. This is based on the logic that they are placed in the most visible places, scrawled over as much surface area as possible, over multiple locations. Therefore, the artist desires that they be seen.

So why do they all look like chicken scratches? What message are you hoping to communicate if your personalized logo is an indecipherable red smear on a park bench? Sure, that same peestain-like mark is then identifiable at different locations -- but what's the point? How is a person supposed to appreciate the meaning? Especially since there are dozens of these things, in all the colours of the rainbow dotting your typical urban landscape?


This one says, "This is my brain on crack" in gangspeak.

It reminds me a bit of people who buy overly complex personalized plates for their car. A suggestion: an easily-read, single-syllable word is way better for your license plate than an obscure acronym for comprehension purposes.

Buddy: Hey, look, another Beemer with a vanity plate. What's it say?
Me: (squinting) Looks like...hmm. VRMPT? What the hell is that?
Buddy: Clearly, it means "Vroom Patrol."
Me: Ah, of course.

So the guys drawing gang tags need some basic marketing lessons. The number one reason you advertise yourself is so that your target will identify with you enough to buy your product. If they don't know who you are, how will they do that? Gangs sell things, I'm pretty sure about that. If they want to increase awareness, they should think about using a basic symbol, something simple, something everybody can understand, to make a statement of who they are. Like these guys have.

Granted, gangs aren't necessarily following a business plan. Maybe they are just painting their marks as a way of threatening people instead. And those being threatened might actually recognize and understand what looks like a random scribble on a brick wall someplace. But even so, the tags would be more effective using the concepts detailed above, modified for a different design goal. Something eyecatching, like a single symbol, a mark, an image. Maybe something scary or demonic, to convey how upsetting and terrifying the local posse is supposed to be. Again, taking a cue from the experts, something like this:


Everybody knows
what this means.

But maybe I'm wasting my time, trying to find meaning in idiocy. Who else but total jackasses would practise drawing their criminal logo in a public place?

Who knows. Maybe there is something to them after all:

Cop: Aha! What's this in your pocket? A gang-tag! Let's go downtown!
Gang Loser: Tha's no tag. Tha's mah name in Arabic, yo! Cain't you read? It says, "Jamal", yo!
Cop: Hmm. All right then, you're free to go, uh, "Jamal".
Gang Loser: Dat's what I'm talkin' about!