The penny dropped. Writing a blog is like tagging graffiti, which I guess makes this blog the cleanest city in the World. Yep, chrismewhort.com is like Dubai.

The correlation’s actually an easy one as the parallels are quite literal, but first I’ll step back for a second and tell you where this all stems from…

As a graffiti writer, I am constantly in discussion with art critics, hipsters, and old fogies about the merits of scribbling your name on a wall versus painting a mural — I like ’em both — but we have equal grounds in that there’s a lot of tagging I don’t like. The difference between toy graffiti (a toy is someone who’s new and/or sucks) and graffiti. There’s a huge difference, and the answer lies within handstyles.

Whether most graffiti artists know it or not, they’re probably also typography nerds. The subtle differences in letter structure that make a tag cohesive, structured, and artistic are similar to those that typeface snobs argue over.

When discussing the difference between a good tag and a bad tag I never know what to say — they just look & sit different — environment, style, size, structure, ink, opacity all play a part.

Unfortunately for all you young-bloggers and young-taggers out there, there’s no quick fix; no secret. You put in your hours and reap what you sew. Transitioning from toy to a respectful handstyle takes attention to detail, creativity, but most of all, it takes throwing at least 10,000 tags before your hand steadies to a point where you can really mark the lines you’re intending to and proudly stand behind them — that’s the correlation to blogging.

In blogging as well, it takes time to get your writing style down. There are moments when you laugh, moments when you cry, and moments where you really have nothing to say. But after 10,000 posts you are a weathered, seasoned, blogging machine. You have a following and you have obvious topics that you stick to. For now, chrismewhort.com doesn’t have the luxury of sitting on 10,000 posts so writing is scattered across all walks of life: I’m a traveler, I’m a web designer, I’m a web developer, friend, artist, and music aficionado.

Join me for the next 99,970 posts!