Graffiti - Art or Vandalism?

Graffitti, does it brighten up our surroundings or ruin them? I have many friends who are graffiti artists, and yes i say artists as thats what i believe they are.

My opinon is that there are two types of graffitti, ones that are art and help brighten up areas of our community and those that just ruin it. The two pictures above represent this. The top picture shows graffiti that i believe is vandalism, these are not artists. This sort of graffiti is known as 'tags' and are basically where people just scribble their names. It's messy, it's often offensive, and it costs governments and ordinary people millions of dollars to fix up every year

The other picture shows true graffiti. In some cities there are places where walls have actually become open air galleries. But it's often hard for graffiti artists to find a place to work legally. That's why some authorities have started to work with them. They're realising that if it's done properly, everybody wins. In America there is a project called Aerosol Art, its a group for children to join and help create grafetti art in run down areas. One piece of work they done was on a railway bridge it used to be covered with illegal graffiti and the council spent about 75,000 dollars a year cleaning it. But since the murals went up, there's been hardly any tagging and if the people in it are caught doing any illegal graffiti they'll be thrown off the team. Below is the railway bridge they done:

This graffiti style is used in media for advertising and on a range of brand products. For example in the picture below graffiti is used on these drink cans.

The drink is called The All City "NRG" drink, made by AriZona Beverage Co.