Claudia Walde

Claudia Walde spent over two years collecting alphabets by 154 artists from 30 countries. Each artist received the same brief: to design all 26 letters of the Latin alphabet within the limits of a single page of the book. The result is a unique typographical sourcebook featuring over 150 specially designed, original alphabets exclusive to this book.

In its early days, illegal graffiti and street art were of necessity modest in scale, hastily created in hours or even minutes, and destroyed just as quickly by authorities, vandals or the elements. Now, however, graffiti writers and street artists are able to take their work to an entirely new level, creating carefully planned, permanent works that cover entire buildings and add a new visual dimension to the world's cities. Claudia Walde, better known as the record-breaking street muralist MadC, has selected more than 200 of the best XXL works and profiled nearly 30 artists who pioneered this trend. Working in dangerous conditions, often hundreds of metres above the ground, yet always keenly aware of the view from street level, these new street muralists are as fearless and technically skilled as they are creatively brilliant. This is a thrilling, super-sized, international celebration of one of the most visible new art movements on the streets of our cities.

Classic graffiti lettering and experimental typographical forms lie at the heart of street culture and have long inspired designers in many different fields. But graffiti artists, who tend to paint the same letters of their tag again and again, rarely design complete alphabets. Claudia Walde has spent over two years collecting alphabets by 154 artists from 30 countries with a view to showing the many different styles and approaches to lettering within the graffiti and street art cultures. All of the artists have roots in graffiti. Some are world renowned such as 123 Klan (Canada), Faith47 (South Africa) and Hera (Germany); others are lesser known or only now starting to emerge. Each artist received the same brief: to design all 26 letters of the Latin alphabet within the limits of a single page of the book. How they approached this task and selected the media with which to express their ideas was entirely up to them. The results are a fascinating insight into the creative process.