2015 was a killer year for us, we completed projects in Dubai, Norway, Switzerland, Germany, the USA and of course across the UK. We helped promote three major movies, created stunning hand painted advertisements for a range of clients and completely transformed over 100 blank walls with stunning art pieces. Here we have collated some of our favourite commercial graffiti works of last year. Here’s to 2016!
January
We started the year off strong, with an office interior mural that we’re really proud of. The details on this wall are stunningly intricate and we successfully met our client’s brief of creating something ‘unexpected’ for their wall.
This special event for Diesel staff members made us think on our feet as we designed a new workshop because we were unable to use our tool of choice – spraypaint. We were super happy with the results and translated our street art style to paintbrushes.
February
This was a massive month for us. Planning for this wall dated back to late 2014, and culminated with a piece that actually broke a world record; for the largest piece of shareable art ever created. This was a promotional event for the movie ‘Chappie’ and through various social media channels, a team of YouTube influencers that helped us create the work, and a live stream via Twitch the campaign reached millions online.
Another blockbuster movie needed our help in February, this time it was promotional work for Disney, drawing live at a special screening of ‘Big Hero 6’.
March
We executed another project that involved months of planning, this time for Grolsch. It was one of our most ambitious efforts to date but also one of our most successful. As well as creating a giant realistic representation of a Grolsch bottle we also hand decorated 400 bottles in various street art styles, including urban gardening, stencilling and yarn bombing. These bottles were installed on the wall to celebrate the 400th birthday of Grolsch.
It was fun but frustrating creating this hand painted advertisement for Adidas UK, it may look like a simple design, but sometimes paintings that look easy can be the most complicated! We nailed it in the end though.
Another hand painted ad, this time for tequila beer brand ‘Desperados’. It’s always satisfying to recreate a clients designs to the letter, and we took care to paint to replicate these bottles as realistically as possible against a playful background.
April
We were invited to paint a huge space within Gatwick Airport. This was a great honour for us, and we saw it as a big step forward; that a prestigious landmark would embrace street art in such a way.
We travelled to Birmingham to complete two huge murals for the regeneration of Regency Wharf, a retail complex within the city centre. We paid homage to the city with old fashioned artwork and completely transformed the once boring spaces into works of art.
Next stop was Berlin for the UFC. We worked on a number of different projects to publicise their event, our favourite being this 3D floor art!
May
We have always had a great relationship with Nike, working on various projects over the years. This one was fun because we got to go back to our roots with some traditional graffiti lettering. We layered hundreds of tags, outlines and pieces over each other, transforming the pitch for a Nike football tournament.
Realistic graffiti is one of most requested services and we continue to push and challenge ourselves with complicated compositions. This wall mural for Mini was one of best of the year, so definitely deserves a mention!
June
We further cemented our relationship with the Grolsch brand with this brave undertaking. It’s probably the most work intensive project we’ve been involved in, where we redesigned the Facebook profile pictures of 400 competition winners.
We completed a number of different projects for make up giants Urban Decay in 2015, one of our favourites was customising their ‘Naked’ palettes using spraypaint and ink. These exclusives got sent to various celebrities and fashion industry influencers.
This was for a private client that wanted a galaxy themed canvas for their house. We were super pleased with the result, it’s really amazing what you can do with spraypaint!
July
Antman was one of our top films of last year, and working for the Marvel franchise was another highlight for our graffiti artists. We completed this stunningly detailed wall mural for a pop up exhibition in central London during the film’s release.
We paid homage to video games old and new in our signature marker pen style with this wall. As kids we were told not to draw on the walls. Look at us now.
August
In August we celebrated Back to the Future Day – the date in the second film where Marty McFly travels to the future. We marked the occasion by sharing this image of our homage to the fantastic trilogy.
Back on the video game fan art, this time it was a full colour spread using spraypaint. We painted Mario and chums battling Bowser and this wall is bigger than it looks!
September
We’re all about making an impact and this 15 metre high wall for video game franchise ‘Halo’ did just that. We received over a million views on Reddit within the first day of a picture being posted. This giant wall mural created a huge buzz around the game, especially when we returned and daubed ‘TRAITOR’ across our artwork – a clue to the game’s story line.
We flew to Las Vegas for video game retailer ‘Game Stop’ and their annual employee conference. Our graffiti artist attended a number of different sessions put on for GS staff and scribed key factors onto a large graffiti wall.
October
We spent several days transforming the whole interior of the Cubana Cafe and Restaurant in Farringdon. As well as this piece in the style of Cuban painters we created wayfinding throughout the space.
Two of our artists travelled to Dubai for a live art speed drawing session for the Mace group. The work was created including key company figures and landmarks of Dubai. There is nothing better than seeing the world whilst creating art!
To help in the fight against trophy hunting we created a giant wall mural in East London for animal charity ‘Four Paws’. Our realistic Lion sat inside a trophy cage, next to it in giant letters we painted ‘This is not a trophy’ and details of how people could get involved. We later learnt that the campaign was successful in achieving the target number of signatures on a petition that the charity was promoting.
November
This seemed to be the month of Live art as we were all over the place creating markerpen masterpieces. First we performed in Birmingham for Harley Davidson at the Motorcycle Show. We actually got to draw and paint live onto parts of the bikes!
Next a group of graffiti artists travelled to Strasbourg to the World Forum for Democracy where we used our art to raise questions that were to be discussed during many of the sessions.
We also attended another trade show and designed artwork for the Estates Gazette, this artwork later became a front cover image for the publication along with an interview from one of our graffiti artists inside.
Dec
We had an amazing end to the year, everyone was talking about Star Wars and we were commissioned to paint the new bad guy – ‘Kylo Ren’.
We had a lot of fun working with staff members from YouTube in one of teambuilding graffiti workshops. The teams had a graffiti ‘battle’ and one of our favourite pieces created was this one – ‘You-fitti’
We’ll close on one of favourites of the year. We love ‘Luther’ on BBC1 and it was an honour to advertise the new two part special with this wall mural in East London (where much of the show is filmed). Our graffiti artists spent a day on this piece and the response was phenomenal.
So that wraps up our 2015 at Graffiti Life. We’re looking forward to an even bigger year this year. As always, if you have any crazy ideas that we can help with then get in touch with one of our project managers today and let us bring your walls to life.